Well this escalated quickly. Reader be warned; this chapter is much darker in nature than the one previous. Proceed with caution.
"Right On Time: Chapter Two"
Carol's upbringing would not have come to much of a shock to the people she now called family. Most of them had already guessed correctly for parts of it. Probably all of it aside from the "Oh, I'm a halfbreed whose mother thought she could pray our demon blood away, and who thought god would cure us if we were just good enough" thing. Glenn might have even guessed that, being something of an avid video game geek before the world descended to a new level of hell.
When Carol Mason had been a youngling, long before she was a Peletier, she had spent nearly everyday watching for her mother with a mix of fear and confusion. The demoness, a lithe monochromatic being, spent many hours in her study. Mostly beseeching god, lamenting their lot as fallen creatures. The kind of thing one would assume a demon married to a Pentecostal preacher would do. Though it wasn't uncommon at all to also find her mother trying to bleed out whatever evil she felt tainted her veins.
Carol hadn't been more than a month or so out from kindergarten when she'd first seen the bloodletting. Father had gone out to tend to a member of his congregation. Father had told her that mother was to be left alone, for she was tending to her absolution. His only child had tried her best to obey father's wishes; but the hours grew long, father hadn't returned, and she was hungry.
She'd known that mother tended to her absolution in the family study. The same place where father worked on his sermons. Musty bibles, passed down through father's family for many generations, and religious iconography filled the dim room. Even before her discovery on that fateful day she had not liked the atmosphere.
As an adult she would finally be able to summarize the unease. It felt like damnation.
When gently knocking for several minutes had yielded no response, and the trepidation of missing dinner after already missing lunch hit her, she'd risked coming in to the room without invitation. For many years afterwards she would wish she'd just allowed herself to go hungry that day. Mother knelt in the study, deep in prayer. Mother knelt in the study, her full glory on display. It was so rare to see her in the form she had been born in. Carol had come to think of it as a kind of treat to see a reflection of her own hidden form.
But this day? The treat was poisoned. Mother had been rocking back and forth, strange words tumbling from her lips. Blood smeared her knees. Her own blood. Carol fought the urge to be sick, and lost. Long gashes danced patterns on mother's beautiful skin and scales, to be lost somewhere in the patches of fur. Her beautiful wings, dark as night and twice as lovely, drooped low in submission.
The sound of bile dripping on carpet, dry heaves trying to force up food that just wasn't there, drew mother's attention to her. Completely foreign before this day, the sheen of her mother's eyes terrified her.
She had just enough time to contemplate running, certainly not time enough to start, when mother's claws dug into her sides. The woman she would one day grow to loathe seemed deaf to the pitiful mewling squeaks of pain. All she seemed to be able to focus on was dragging her child over to the splotch of blood. Struggling did no good, mother was bigger and stronger and lost to whatever this madness was.
"Stop child, hush," she hissed as she pushed her daughter into a kneel. "We must absolve ourselves. We have sinned, Carol. We have sinned. We were born of the lineage of Lilith, tainted by her curse. Your father has done his best to redeem our souls. We must do our part. Pray, Carol. Humble yourself and beg forgiveness from god for being born so wicked. God is good, Carol; god will forgive us our diseased flesh if we pray to him every day. Bare your true form to god so that he may cleanse you with his holy righteousness. Now child, you daughter of the serpent, now! Praise the creator, he is mighty!"
Carol didn't want to. She had never been more afraid in her young life. Mother had started shaking her, demanding she show her true self to god. She gave in quickly, thinking it would make the abuse stop.
That belief was a vain, foolish little thing. The study was holy ground. She had no more completed her transformation when the pain set in. The young demoness howled as her skin sizzled and began to pulse. Great sores appeared, burning and throbbing. Mother had kept a grip on her, appraising her pain and nodding in apparent satisfaction.
"Trust not the flesh," Mother bellowed at her terrified child, "for many is the guise of the devil. Look upon yourself, Carol; to the world you are an innocent child. But I tell you, you are not an innocent but a roaring lion; sent by the father of our line, Satan, to devour. By the power of God we will cowl this beast.
"You are full of the wickedness, Carol. But god will cleanse you if it is his will to do so. We must pray for absolution, Carol. Pray with me! Father forgive us our sins! Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Keep praying, Carol! Give us this day, our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Say it, Carol! Say it!" Mother's claws dug deep into her arms, shaking her and sending crimson flying from the gashes.
Her tears did nothing, no quarter would be given. She had choked on the words in her pain. "Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from evil. Momma, I'm sorry!"
The sharp crack as mother's paw found her face was muffled by the thick study room carpet. That had somehow made the situation all the more lurid in her child's mind. Not that age and life experience ever convinced her it was anything but.
"Don't apologize to me! Don't you dare apologize to me! You have wronged god! Your very existence is an abomination unto him. Apologize to god, Carol, for offending him with your life. Do it, now! Now! So help me I'll rip the wings from your back if you don't apologize to god for having them! Now, Car-"
Mother had no more been prepared for the fist that connected with the side of her head than Carol had been for her mother's savagery.
Father stood over them, having come home from his work to find this mess. There was a look of pained disappointment in the creases on his face. A look of bitter failure. A look Carol had never before associated with herself or mother.
Despite her demonic heritage, or maybe because of it, father had always loved mother with a powerful intensity. Before this moment, young Carol would have told you mother would never look at father with such a hateful gaze. And father would definitely never lift a hand to mother, even if it was to defend his child.
"Sweetheart, please go back to your human form. Then go out in the living room and wait for me there. Your mother and I need to have a talk." His words were clipped and it was obvious he was exerting a great deal of self control to keep his tone even.
Mother, unknowing or uncaring at the moment, hissed in displeasure. "She will do no such thing. It is god's will that she learn absolution. I was praying to god for a sign, to know when she would be ready to purge herself of her tainted blood, when she came into the room. I tell you now, it is god's will!"
"This isn't the will of god, Cynthia! God is a teacher, a parent; god is love. Don't you dare go putting your convictions on our girl. Look at how she shakes. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea."
Whatever else he may have said was lost to the click of the door shutting behind her as Carol saw her opportunity and took it. Her parents' conversation was not a long one, and probably not a resolved one. A few minutes later father did find her where he had told her to be. He probably hadn't meant for her to be curled up and rocking back and forth, though. Abject horror was clear and present for the first time in her young life, her cries of bewilderment for what had happened a soundless scream.
"But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the father on the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation." Father sighed wearily, pulling her to him.
She clung to him. Sorry she had disobeyed. Confused as to why her mother would dare treat her that way. It was not in her to fathom such treatment at the hand of one she loved so dearly. Prior to this day she would not have guessed that mother disliked the skin she was in.
Her crying had simmered down to a soft, pitiful sniffle when she finally spoke. "I don't understand, daddy."
"God made men the head of the family for a reason. Women have been headstrong and rebellious since the beginning of creation. First Lilith, who would not accept her proper place. Then Eve, whose disobedience brought down mankind. You, my poor daughter, are unfortunate enough to come from both of those tainted lines. I have allowed my influence over the womenfolk of this family to grow lax, and you paid the price for it. If you had listened to me, not bothered your mother while she was getting right with god, that never would have happened. And if your mother had listened to me, and kept you out of her absolution, that never would have happened. But I should have taught both of you that ignoring what I have asked of you is unacceptable behavior.
"I say this to you out of love, child. Your life will be nothing but unfulfillment and misery if you do not give yourself over to god's plan for you. God wants you to remain under my care, under my rules, until I give you away to the man god has chosen for you to marry. As long as you are a humble and faithful woman he will bless you. If you sew discord and refuse to follow god's plan you will reap turmoil. God allowed for this to happen today so I can impart this lesson on you, and relearn it myself, sweetheart. Do you understand now?" He smiled kindly down at her while wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
It never occurred to her to question that train of thought. She accepted it as readily as she accepted that god worked in mysterious ways. The rest of her childhood, into her adulthood and her marriage to Ed, she would carry that putrid lesson close to her heart. Pastor Mason had not meant to cause further harm to his daughter, but the road to hell was always paved with good intentions.
Her childhood had continued much the same as it was before the incident. The most noticeable difference was an herb paste that was turned into a drink and given to her every day. It was bitter and acidic. She hated everything about it, from the bile inducing taste to the painful sting as she swallowed, to be followed by a dull sting as it sat in her gut. Which was nothing compared to the day she found her true nature had been suppressed and that the herbs were doing it. But it was the will of father, and father's will was the will of god.
If she was jumpy, a little less inclined to be in mother's company, well, no one said anything. That was their family. It was no one else's business. Besides, everyone knew the preacher's wife took her devotion to god very seriously. It was thought to be as like as not that she had decided to start training her daughter how to be a proper lady.
Baking, sewing, and cleaning were normal things. Non religious things. They became her only safe way of bonding with mother. Which fed the confirmation bias that the Mason matriarch was trying to raise a proper, southern lady.
No one thought it odd when the Masons chose to home school their only child. Of course a preacher's child would be schooled at home, away from the secular influence of the public education system. And if she showed up to Sunday service with a mark or two, well, that was her parents godly right to punish her as they saw fit. The elderly of the congregation nodded their heads in approval of her good upbringing. Those of her parents generation talked about what a blessing it would be to have a proper girl like Carol join their family.
By the time she was a teenager, she didn't even need to be reminded to take her drink. Suppressing herself had become natural. She did not question authority. She did not flinch when struck. She had learned the art of the public face.
Some secrets really aren't that hard to keep once you get the knack for it.
So when Edward Peletier Junior, the son of a well respected member and usher of their church, had asked father's permission to court her she'd felt she had no right to say no. When Edward asked father's permission to marry her, she went along with father's wishes. On the occasions when Ed, and by then he had been just Ed for awhile, felt the need to exercise his authority over her she took it with the quiet dignity her parents had imparted on her as her lot. When father's job took her parents from their home town in Georgia to a new congregation in Mississippi, cutting her off from any help her parents may have been unknowingly providing, she took it in stride.
Ed did become more violent in his "corrections" once her kin were safely out of the state. Carol sometimes fantasized about mother being told, and meeting the same kind of lesson out on Ed as she had taught Carol all those years ago. Then the bitter wash of guilt would come over her, and she would pray to god for forgiveness for committing the sin of murder in her heart.
After a particularly savage beating, when the beast inside her would howl to have its way with this creature not worthy to be called a man, she would take a double dose of her remedy and pray to god for the strength to carry on and the wisdom to obey his will.
All the while Ed was unaware of his wife's true nature. Unaware of the bullet he dodged every night as he slept. Not that Carol believed Ed knowing about the other side of her would make it any easier on her. He'd probably pat himself on the back for being such a manly man and being able to control such a woman. He hadn't stepped foot in a church since their wedding, but that didn't mean he wouldn't invoke his god given right to keep on beating her when he wanted to.
But he could be funny, and charming. He would bring home gifts and flowers "just because". Besides, she didn't want to be alone. And she didn't want to commit the sin of divorce. Carol also never caught the irony of a demon following the Bible with more fervor than most humans ever did.
The Peletiers carried on like this for the first decade or so after the wedding. Sophia was unplanned, but not entirely unexpected, when she came along in the thirteenth year of their marriage. Carol took double doses of her remedy, even as it tore at her insides, with regularity. As a reward for her sacrifice to her own health, Sophia was born looking like a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, fully human infant. If Ed ever saw Carol slipping bits of her "herbal tea" into Sophia's bottles he never bothered to say anything.
The unexpected was her reaction to motherhood. Carol had been afraid of becoming like mother. She needn't have worried. Protective? Possessive? Yes, both those things and so much more. But she didn't allow her affection to be tainted by the same sickness that had befallen mother.
Looking at Sophia, hearing her cries as the herbs prevented something that was completely natural for them, she started to question if things were really the way her parents had believed them to be. Maybe she could tell Ed no. Maybe she should tell Ed no. Maybe god was as loving as father always claimed. And if god loved her, really loved her, would he really punish her for a lineage she couldn't control? Would he really expect her to allow a man to use her as a punching bag because two thousand years ago some desert goat herders had written his commandments through a lens of their own understandings, societies, and customs?
The first time Carol rebelled against the teaching she had grown up with, had had beaten into her hide, had been told she would die and burn and suffer for all eternity if she went against them, had been for Sophia's sake. Ed had been hungover, Sophia had the volume of the television louder than Ed had wanted it. To his surprise, the smack he'd been aiming at his child landed on his wife instead. He'd stared at her with shock. She'd stared right back with resolve. The three broken ribs hurt, and took awhile to heal, but Carol took them as a badge of honor. Ed hadn't managed to touch a hair on Sophia's head.
Her beatings became even more frequent, but Sophia was spared. She took it as a sign that god was finally pleased with her. Her demonic nature agreed, and pushed it a step farther. It told her god wanted her to be happy in her own skin. That the almighty wanted her to embrace it. She told her demonic nature she was going to consider listening to it, she just needed to think about it first.
The first day she encountered a walker, she had been standing over the garbage disposal. Self prescribed medication in hand and the machine running at full power. She had debated it for a month, getting rid of the thing that held her essence captive against its will. News reports of a strange new illness, of people rioting in some of the major cities, had taken a backseat to the pressing matter of deciding the path she would take. Today was the day. Today she and Sophia would be free to embrace what they really were. Within six to ten weeks it would completely be out of their systems. If Ed didn't like it he could just thank himself. She'd caught him looking at Sophia in a manner no father should ever look at his daughter when Sophia had come out of the bathroom, dressed in her pajamas, the night before. On that moment he signed the warrant for the date of his execution. He just didn't know it yet.
As she contemplated whether to eat her husband after he was dead, or to gag him and devour him as he silently screamed, the window to the right of her sink shattered inward. A mutilated arm, belonging to a younger woman who had recently purchased the house next door, groped blindly among the jagged glass left in the sill, searching for purchase. Carol had meant to go over there soon to make her acquaintance. Now she was pretty sure it didn't matter to the neighbor what her name was. Slipping from her hand, the jar broke and the concoction she had been about to joyously pour out mockingly tumbled into the disposal.
Right on time Sophia began to scream, Ed began to yell, and the best laid plans of gods and demons fizzled before they could so much as spark.
If someone had told that version of her, at that time, that roughly two years later that a rough around the everything redneck would be the man who treated her as an equal, and then found out the one thing she had been hesitant to tell him about was a thing he dealt with too? She would have told the person that god didn't have time for the likes of her. Well, Carol was ready to take back every bad thing she had said about god ever.
"I think we need to talk," Carol said tactfully, just barely managing to keep her composure. So much needed to be said, needed to be explained, sorted out before they proceeded with anything. How was she supposed to do any of that when Daryl was staring at her like he had seven different ideas on how he wanted their mating to go down and she wanted to add another nine to the list?
A/N: Daryl's chapter was very much a chapter of the now. Yes, he did get some introspection, but it isn't very hard to picture Daryl as something other than human. Carol's chapter is very much a chapter of her past. It can sometimes be frustrating to marry the events of the show to a non canon history of the character and still make the union work. It did raise as many questions as it answered, but we're heading that way.
Comments? Critisisms? Questions? My review box is open, and I do greatly appreciate the feedback.