I GOT OFF FROM SCHOOL! YEAH BITCH! XD so excited! Snow day! So this chapter will go into episode 2 of season four and also have a memory from the past. And from watching the snow fall, I decided it was going to be a Christmas memory, because I've been wanting to do a memory like it. And then also I just watched the episode on youtube and I have to say this chapter will definitely not be word by word because my memory is not that good and probably never will be. XD So I hope you enjoy!
"Why are these lights all tangled up in a ball?" Daryl yells, agitated at the knotted up Christmas lights from the boxes in Anna's closet. Anna chuckles from the kitchen, walking over to him and handing him a cup of coffee.
"I don't know. They always end up like that either way. Even if you put them back in the box just the way you found them, they'll end up getting tangles anyway." She takes the ball from his hands and hands him the mug. "You go get the ladder and I'll untangle this." He raises an eyebrow.
"Ya sure ya can?" he chuckles. She rolls her eyes, placing a hand on her hip.
"I've been untangling these since I was six. I know how to untangle shit. Now go get the ladder so we can put this shit up." Daryl rolls his eyes and walks over to the closet where the step ladder was. "Have you ever actually expierenced a real Christmas?" she asks.
He doesn't answer at first, but when he is about to, "Frosty the Snowman" started to belt throughout the apartment. Anna looks to the cd player and see her daughter dancing around the living room, singing along to the tune. She rolls her eyes and turns back to Daryl, who was now coming towards her. He sees she has completely untangled the ball.
"How the hell?" he asks. She chuckles and turns back to the tree that was in the living room, placing them on the tree slowly.
"Told you I know my stuff," she says, coming down lower to the ground to finish up the lights.
"Well, whatever," he grumbles. She laughs.
"Aw, is wittle Daryl sad he can't do something his friend can do? The baby!" she coons, throwing her arm on his shoulder. He playfully glares at her and she laughs again, heading back over to the tree. "Girls are better at stuff then guys sometimes, you know that. Right?"
"Mama's right!" Aria says from the window seat, staring outside and the blank city. "She's always right."
"Not all the time," he replies. "Wasn't right about that party," he mumbles under his breath. But Anna caught him and smacked his shoulder.
"Not here in front of the kid," she hisses, turning back to the box full of colorful ornaments she had brought back from home. She turns to him, her NYU ornament hanging on the tree now. "You never answered my question."
"What question?" he grunts, picking up a heavy box full of stuff from the living room and bringing it to the hall closet.
"Have you ever actually had a real Christmas?" she asks. He drops the box and closes the door, walking back to the two girls.
"Ya know my past. So ya know the answer." She frowns and looks down for a moment, thinking. What could she do?
"MAMA! IT'S SNOWING!" Aria screams from the window. Anna's brow furrows and she walks over to the window. Sure enough, there were tiny particles of frozen water falling from the sky and sticking to the ground like kids tongue to a popsicle stick on a warm summer day. "Jack Frost is making it SNOW!" she yells. Anna chuckles.
"Indeed he is! You did wear your PJ's backwards last night. Maybe that's why!" Aria smiles at the snow and opens up the window slightly, trying to catch the pure white substance in her hand so she could see the delicate pattern it created.
Anna walks back over to where Daryl was and he raises an eyebrow at her again. "Jack Frost?" he chuckles. She snickers.
"That was the fairytale I used to tell her when I was younger. Now she believes in him with all her heart. If it snows, she knows it's Jacks doing." She sighs. "It's be nice to actually have a Jack Frost. Maybe he and Aria would have been good friends."
"Ya don't know. Maybe there is. Ya just have to believe," he teases. She punches his side playfully, knowing he was joking.
"Shut up," she says, rolling her eyes for the umpteenth time that day. "Just because you don't believe in fairytails doesn't mean they aren't true!" she accuses.
"It's just my opinion, jeez." She smiles and looks back out the window. A sudden idea pops into her mind. She looks at the window, then the scarf in the couch, then the rest of the winter supplies by the door.
They were in NYC.
During Christmas time.
And it was snowing.
Why were they inside doing shit?
She smiles and turns to her daughter. "Aria! We're heading out today!" she calls to her daughter. "Get your snow stuff on!" She squeals in excitement and runs to the door to put on her boots. Anna turns to Daryl and he's working on the tree.
"So you're just gonna leave me here while ya and your daughter go out? Real nice Anna," he taunts. She snickers and wraps a scarf around his neck. He looks at her with a confused expression. "What're ya doing?" he asks.
"Taking you out," she replies, a smile on her face. "We're in NYC for God's sake. It's time to show you a real Christmas."
Aria runs up to the Santa in the street to say hello while Anna and Daryl sat back on a bench, watching her tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. The snow was falling slowly now, not as it had been before, but there was enough snow now to make a snowman or have a snowball fight.
"How many Santa's are there in New York?" Daryl asks, shaking his head. "There's literally one on every corner of this god damn city." Anna chuckles.
"Because all of them are for the Salvation Army and it has been going on for years. Most of everyone donates to the buckets." He snorts.
"Not me," he says. Anna sighs.
"I had a feeling," she chuckles. "But, since we are in Central Park, how about we have some fun?" She calls over her daughter. "Aria? How about you go play on the playground, ok? There's a nice lady over there guarding you!" Aria nods and runs over, away from the pile of kids who were practically eating Santa up with his lap.
"What kind of fun?" Daryl asks. Anna smiles and takes something out from her bag. When Daryl sees what it is, he shakes his head, a giant grin on his face. "A snowman? Are we five?"
"In the snow! Yes!" she says. She grabs his arm. "You've never even made a real snowman! And I make some pretty good ones! Come on, stop being a baby!" Daryl rolls his eyes and lets her pull him to the open area that was filled with snow.
"We'll look retarded out her," he says. She just snorts, pulling him further.
"Who gives a flying monkeys wet ass about what other people think? I'm showing you a good time. Now go and pack up some snow! A large one and a medium sized one. I'll make the head!" He rolls his eyes but nods.
"Whatever ya say, princess." She growls but continues to make the head, causing him to snickers. The two work silently for a moment before Anna places the two balls he had had made on top of each other. She places the head on top and smiles, while he tips his head curiously. "That's a weirdly shaped head."
"It's perfect." She starts to place the supplies she had gotten on the snowman, Daryl handing her the stones and sticks. She finishes it up by topping his head off with a few sticks sticking out of the top, and a big orange carrot for the nose, praying to God that a rabbit wouldn't come by and eat it off. "There," she says, sitting back in the snow to admire her creation.
"What're ya naming it?" he asks. She scoffs and gets up.
"It's a he," she says, walking over to the snowman. He shakes his head at her childness. "And his name is Olaf," she says, waving the snowman's hand in a waving motion. "And he likes warm hugs!"
"A snowman who likes warm hugs?" he chuckles. She nods.
"He's pretty interesting. He's always wanted to experience summer even though he thinks he won't melt because he's magical." He raises an eyebrow at her. "He was an imaginary friend I had when I was younger," she chuckles.
"Ya give your imaginary friends weird backstorys." She nods, looking at her snowman fully. She sighs and looks at her watch on her wrist. It was 11:11. She chuckles inwardly and looks back at the snowman. 'I wish you were real,' she says to the statue. She smiles. What was she, a little kid?
She suddenly feels something pelt into the back of her head and sink down her jacket, into her shirt. It was freezing cold, and it melted as soon as it touched her body. She spins around and glares at Daryl, who was snickering, snow in his hand, ready to throw at her.
He had actually just thrown a snowball at her!
"THIS IS WAR!" she yells, picking up a snowball as soon as possible and throwing it to his face. She laughs as it lands on the target. When he wipes the snow off, he has a determined look on his face.
"Ya are so going down, Anna," he growls, running towards her. She yelps and runs the other way, picking up snow as fast as she could and throwing it at him to stop. She had managed to get in a few good throws that gave her the advantage of speed, but he was always right on top of her. They had basically run around in a circle when Anna had tripped on a spare tree root that was sticking out of the snow, loosing her track of pace and almost falling to the ground.
How had she not seen that before?!
She tries to pick up her pace again, but squeals when she feels his arms wrap around her and pull her back to him. She struggles against his grasp, but it was useless. Having her around him, he takes the opportunity and dumps a huge pile of snow on her head by grabbing a tree branch and letting it fly. She squeals as the snow goes down her shirt.
"DARYL!" she yells, rubbing the snow from her eyes. But out of pure clumsiness, she trips on her own two feet, sending her to the ground, but it wasn't just her. She had grabbed Daryl's hand and he had fallen down as well.
Right on top of her.
When she can see again, she blushes at the close proximity. "Why did you do that?" she chuckles. He shrugs his shoulders.
"I wanted to. Ya wanted me to have fun, right?" She scoffs and rolls her eyes.
"Not by tackling me with snow and sending me to the ground!" she chuckles.
"Ya took me to the ground!" he accuses. She shakes her head.
"No, it was you!"
"Nope, I don't agree on that."
"Well I still think you're the reason," she chuckles, leaning up slightly to get a little closer to him, even though she already was.
"Will ya shut up?" he playfully says.
"Make me," she chuckles, grinning at him. His own grin creeps onto his face, but he gently tucks a piece of hair hanging in front of her behind her ear, causing her already rosy cheeks to turn redder. He leans in and hesitantly pecks her lips, seeing how well she would respond. To which she does.
She's the first one to pull back. She smiles at him. "Merry Christmas, Daryl," she chuckles.
"Merry Christmas…princess," he teases. She groans and faceplants, causing him to chuckle.
"I need to go get my kid. Come on," she says, a hand reaching out to him. He takes it, her lifting him up from the snow. But little did they know a small set of brown eyes were watching them from the playground, a smile on her face.
Aria had gotten her wish for Christmas.
PRESENT
Aria walked through the corridors of the prison early in the morning. She could never sleep late, so usually she was up and atom. Either helping Rick and Carl in the garden, practicing her knives on her bulls eye she had made, or just simply talking with other people.
There were some people there her age. But the only two people she really talked to were Beth and Carl.
Carl was her age, while Beth was 19. She considered Beth the older sister she never had. She was funny and sang really well. And also the fact that she always let Aria hold Judith. The baby was adorable.
She used to hold Scarlett like that when she was a baby. She was actually pretty cute. The perfect mixture of her parents. Had Anna's dark brown hair and Daryl's blue eyes. The traits were not that different either. She could be shy but smart, just like her mother, but also didn't stand for anyones shit, just like Daryl.
The perfect mixture.
She thought that was one of the reasons Carol had left ages ago. But she had let that go a long time ago. All she cared about was that the witch was gone and now her family could be happy.
"Aria?" she hears behind her. She was now outside. She turns around and sees her mother there, a bucket of water in her hands.
"You're never up this early," Aria comments, laughing slightly. Her mother shrugs.
"I didn't feel safe for some reason. I don't know. Must be the weather. I'm still amazed you can be out here in just a tank top. How are you not at least a little cold? It's November for crying out loud." Aria chuckles.
"I don't know. Are you helping them with the garden?" she asks. The woman nods.
"You want to?" she asks. Aria shakes her head.
"Nah. I'm gonna head around the perimeter. I've been working on something." Anna raises an eyebrow.
"Do I want to know?" she chuckles. Aria shakes her head again.
"Nope." Anna rolls her eyes and walks over to the farm. Arai chuckles and heads over to the fences to see the walkers clawing at it, dying for a piece of the survivors flesh.
Wait, they were already dead.
Aria notices a couple of girls, maybe her age, or a year younger, pointing at one of them. She walks over and hears what they're talking about, in a hush whisper.
"You stab it!" one of them whispers.
"No, you do!" she says back, shaking her head, eyes wide. Aria rolls her eyes and walks between the two, surprising them, and over to the walker that was knowing away at the fence. She takes out her knife that she used all the time and walked right up to the disgusting thing, plunging it deep into it's skull. When she pulls it back out, she wipes the gunk on her pants and turn to the girls.
"You need to learn how to not be afraid of those things," she says to the younger girls. They both nod, but the older one looks at her.
"Aren't you Anna Dixon's daughter?" she asks. Aria smiles. She still wasn't used to the last name, but she liked it.
"Yes I am." They smile.
"She's so nice to us," the younger girl says,
"Really? What're your names?" Aria asks.
"I'm Lizzie, and this is my younger sister Mika." Aria nods.
"Nice to meet you." She starts to say something else but hears a gunshot go off from inside the prison. Not even thinking, she runs towards it, seeing both her mother and Daryl run towards it as well. When she steps inside, she automatically is met by a walker. She stabs its head and avoids the teeth of another one trying to knaw at her neck. She slides under it's legs, just like her mother had taught her, and gets up. She stabs the head, and turns to the scene in front of her.
It was a mad house.
"It's some sort of sickness," Anna says later in the council room next to Daryl. "It's spread fast, but I just don't get how it spreads so quickly in one night."
"How can someone die so quickly if they were just infected?" Glenn asks. Hershel speaks up.
"It's a disease where you cough so much you choke on your own blood, and it kills you. Simple as that. That's what caused the blood marks on that mans face. He was infected with the virus."
"Is there anyway we can fix it?" Sasha asks. Anna leans a little closer as well, wanting to hear what Hershel had to say.
"We don't have the medicine right now, but I'm sure we can figure out slowly. But for now, we need to quarantine the people who weren't exposed. We can't risk anyone else getting sick."
"But out of all of us that are exposed-"
"Isn't that are whole cell block?" Daryl finishes. "That's a while lot of people. Where would we put them?" he asks.
"Cell Block A is clear, last time I checked," Anna replies, looking at the others.
"We could put them on Death Row. It isn't that much of a step up but it'll do," Glenn says. Anna nods.
"It's better. It's clean. That's all that matters," Daryl replies. Anna nods again.
"So when-" They all hear coughing in the hallway. Anna looks at Daryl worried and all of the council stands up, heading outside. Tyresse was holding a coughing Karen in his arms.
"Are you ok?" he asks her. She nods.
"I'm fine," she replies. Anna steps out.
"Are you sure?" she asks. "Where are you going?" she asks Tyreese.
"She hasn't been feeling that good, so I'm gonna take her back to my cell to get some rest." The rest of the council comes out.
"I don't think that's a good idea, Tyresse," Hershel says. Anna nods in agreement, backing up a bit to stand next to Daryl.
"Why not?" he asks confused.
"There's this sickness spreading around the prison and it's highly contagious. Some sort of coughing fit virus. It's not safe to be around someone who has it. And Karen…" Her eyes widen slightly.
"Is…Is there a cure for it or…or anything?" she asks, slightly frightened.
"There's no need to get scared. But we do need to separate the exposed people from the non-exposed so we need you to move to a different cell block until this all clears up." Karen nods, looking down.
"David was coughing as well earlier today. I think he might have it too." Hershel nods.
"I'll go tell David," Glenn volunteers, running off in the opposite direction. Sasha leads Tyreese and Karen down the other side of the hallway, and Hershel starts to leave to go find something to help this virus.
"Guess we'll get to work burying the dead," Daryl says.
"Wear a mask. Be careful, Daryl," he says. The man nods and Hershel leaves around the corner. Anna leans against the wall. Daryl turns to her.
"Ya ok?" he asks. She's silent for a second.
"Both my daughters were in there, but I don't think either of them got sick. Does that mean they stay with us?" she asks. He nods.
"They'll be with us," he assures. She looks down and sighs.
"I'm worried about Aria," she says. He looks at her with a confused expression.
"What's wrong?" he asks. She looks back.
"I shit you not when I say this, but I seriously think that she has some weird powers or something." He raises an eyebrow.
"Powers?" he says. She nods.
"Yep. I swear, almost every painting she paints comes true. I feel like she can somehow see into the future somehow, and a lot of those paintings are really bad. Like, REALLY bad. And now it seems like she's so depressed all the time ever since she found Lily dead. The two were close," she ends.
"Lily?"
"She was here for a short time before she went out and got bit. She was a close friend of mine. Aria always considered her an aunt because she was always over. I just have a bad feeling about this. All of this." He smiles sadly and comes closer to her.
"Well, whatever this is," he says. "We'll make it through together. We've made it this far, why not go all the way?" She smiles, leaning up and kissing his lips.
"You better not be infected," she says, pulling back.
"If I was, do ya think I'd be kissing ya, woman?" he replies. She chuckles and walks down the hallway with him, going to help him with the graves. "By the way, Aria is a natural at the crossbow," he replies. She smiles.
"Just like her dad," she says. He rolls his eyes, pushing her shoulder, to which she pushes his back.
DONE BITCH! Jesus that took me long. So I tried my best with dialogue because I'm not good at remembering stuff unless Daryl said it XD so I have like no memory of lines, only what happened. But next chapter I will say that Anna is going on the trip to get the medicine for the group. And yeah, Aria is special. Very special. But you'll find that out later in the story. This chapter was kind of shorted then my past ones, but that's because I'm slightly tired and I wasn't going to fill in the chapter with some bullshit that made no sense. But I tried my hardest. I hope you enjoyed! REVIEW!