AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl got in bed at least half an hour before Carol had finished her preparations for the night.
It was evident that even if he'd done what he'd done with the best of intentions, Carol wasn't of the mindset that what he'd done was the best thing he could have chosen.
The worst of it was that he didn't even know where to begin to make it up to her, even though he'd spent all of his time eating supper in some kind of gnawing consideration about what would be best and how to handle the situation.
Sophia didn't seem, unless she was a very good actress for a girl of fourteen, to be too severely bothered by the situation at hand. She'd eaten her dinner in relative silence, complimented Carol on her cooking, and she'd offered to clear the table, though Carol had told her that she didn't need to do it and insisted on doing it herself.
But Sophia hadn't really talked much, and Carol hadn't talked much, and Daryl felt like he certainly didn't have anything to say at that point. It was all too out of his league at this point.
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"Sophia?" Carol asked, knocking gently at the bedroom door that was cracked. She pushed the door open just slightly. "Can I come in?"
"Yes ma'am," Sophia responded.
And when Carol did push into the room, she wasn't sure what Sophia had been doing, but the girl walked from the middle of the room, where there was really nothing to have entertained her, and got into her bed, the lamp beside her bed lit.
"I brought you some warm milk," Carol said. "I didn't know…I thought you might not be able to sleep well and something warm at night helps me when I can't sleep. I just thought you might like it. I brought you a clean towel for tomorrow, too."
Sophia nodded at her and Carol put the towel on the dresser. She came over to the bed and offered the girl the mug of steaming milk. Sophia accepted it and thanked her quietly.
"May I sit?" Carol asked.
Sophia sipped from the mug and nodded at her.
"With respect, ma'am, it's your house," Sophia responded. "I think you can do whatever you like."
Carol laughed to herself at the response.
"I meant that I don't want to invade your space," Carol responded. "I don't want you to feel like I'm too…present, I guess."
Sophia smiled.
"I like it," Sophia said. "You can sit."
Carol sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the little girl in the lamplight while she nursed the mug of milk.
"You're not drinking any milk?" Sophia asked.
Carol raised an eyebrow at her in question.
"You said you drink it when you can't sleep," Sophia responded. "Are you going to sleep well tonight?"
Carol smiled softly.
"I don't know," she responded honestly. "But I'm going to try. I'll get some later if I can't sleep."
"Is it me?" Sophia asked.
"You what?" Carol asked, seeking clarification for whatever was concerning the girl, the line between her eyebrows evident.
"Is it me that's going to make it difficult for you to sleep?" Sophia asked. "You don't want me here?"
Carol felt her stomach turn slightly.
That wasn't the case at all. She wanted the girl there. This was her daughter, and she wanted to do whatever she could do for the girl. If anything, it would be her guilt that kept her awake. It would be her guilt over having not been there before and her guilt over not really knowing what to do now. But Sophia's presence wasn't something that would keep her awake in itself.
Carol shook her head.
"Sophia, I want you here," Carol said. "And I want you to have whatever you want…whatever you need out of life. I just know that…"
Carol broke off with a sigh.
"What is it?" Sophia asked. "What do you know?"
Carol looked at her and shook her head again. She mustered up the best smile that she could put on and moved instinctively to smooth the girl's hair or touch her, but she pulled back before she made the movement and stroked the bed cover instead.
"You're just a little girl," Carol said. "There's no need for you to worry about things. Everything's fine, and I'm thrilled to have you here. I really am."
Sophia put the mug on the bedside table and shifted around, sitting up even straighter in her bed and taking on an expression that Carol couldn't quite read, but suddenly she didn't feel like she was looking at a fourteen year old girl.
"Then why do you seem so sad?" Sophia asked. "I'm fourteen, but I'm not dumb…with all due respect."
Carol almost laughed at the awkward addition of the words. It sounded like a learned response, like some kind of religious call and answer. It was clearly something the girl had been taught to say, probably because she didn't always speak with "all due respect".
But she did seem a little wiser than Carol gave a fourteen year old credit for being, and she did seem genuinely interested, so Carol thought she might offer the girl something.
"I'm not sad because you're here," Carol offered. "I'm sad, I guess, because I haven't been there for you. And…I'm not a mother. I'm not sure that I know how to be one. I guess that I'm just sad because I don't know if I know how to be your mother."
Sophia considered it for a moment, twisting her lips up at Carol. Then she smiled, her nose crinkling slightly.
"Well," Sophia said, "You brought me milk, and that seems like a mother thing to do, don't you think? I haven't ever had a mother before. I suppose I'll be learning to have a mother while you're learning to be mine?"
Carol smiled and nodded, unable to speak at the moment for the lump that rose up in her throat at the idea.
She got up quickly from the bed, trying to suck in air to push the lump down without being too obvious about it.
"Would you like me to tuck you in?" Carol asked. "Or are you too old for that?"
"Am I too old for that?" Sophia asked, chewing her lip.
Carol thought that she looked like she was really trying to figure out the answer to that. And Carol didn't know what the real answer might be.
"I don't know," Carol answered honestly. "But…I won't tell if you won't."
Sophia smiled and shifted around, sliding down in her bed. Carol arranged the covers around the girl, tucking her into bed the same way she tucked in Andrea's children when she was over at their house near bedtime and someone requested that she tuck them in.
Carol held her breath and leaned down, kissing Sophia's forehead softly, and brushed her hair back.
"Goodnight?" Carol said when she stood up. "Sleep well?"
Sophia stared at her.
"You too?" Sophia responded.
Carol switched off the lamp and felt her way out of the room, stopping a moment in the living room to sit on the arm of the couch and get control of her emotions before she attempted to go to bed and have any sort of conversation with Daryl about everything.
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"Just stop bein' mad at me a minute an' try ta see what I'm sayin'," Daryl protested from his side of the bed.
Carol looked at him with her lips so tight together they'd very nearly disappeared. He hadn't ever seen her eyes look at him so coldly.
"I thought you had a kid an' it was dead," Daryl continued when it seemed clear that she was going to hear him out, or that she at least wasn't going to respond. "When we got married, you was just barely rememberin' your fiancé and everything you remembered was bad. But you didn't remember this kid and…what good was it gonna do to tell you that you had a kid that was dead?"
Some of the hot anger on Carol's face faded, but she still looked bothered.
"And all the time we've tried for a baby?" Carol asked. "All the time that I've spent worrying that I could never have one? That there was something wrong with me? All the doctors?"
Daryl shook his head at her.
"The doctors knew," Daryl said. He hated the sound of the admission coming out of his mouth. "I told 'em, and they still said the same thing. They said you could have children, they said you were healthy. They didn't change nothing they had ta say."
Carol sucked in her bottom lip and chewed at it for a moment.
"You could tell them, but you couldn't tell me? Not even to just…" She broke off and shrugged dramatically. Daryl worried that she was on the verge of tears. "Not even just to…ease my mind?"
Daryl swallowed back his own feelings. He shook his head at her.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so damn sorry…an' I know I screwed up. I didn't know what you would do. I didn't know how you would act."
Carol stared at him a moment and then nodded her head slowly and deliberately. She cleared her throat loudly.
"Well, now you know how I would act," she said. "I'm sorry that you didn't feel that you could tell me what you seemed to be able to tell everyone else. It must have been hard on you to live all these years with…"
She got up suddenly and walked toward the wall, starting something of a pace with her back to him. He called her name to get her attention and she held her hand up to stop him.
After a moment she turned around.
"I'm sorry that you have had to live your life with someone who was so...unpredictable…that you couldn't even tell me the truth about myself," Carol said.
She turned then and walked out of the room and Daryl followed her through the darkened house as she made her way toward the bathroom and went through the medicine cabinet.
"What are you doin'?" Daryl asked.
Carol stopped in front of the medicine cabinet with a bottle in her hand. She looked at it and then held it up to Daryl.
"I have a headache," she said. "I'm taking something for my headache. Am I allowed to? Or is that too extreme for a headache? Maybe I shouldn't have said anything about it. Maybe I should have kept it to myself."
Daryl could feel the bite in her words. He stepped forward and caught the hand that had the bottle in it. She released the bottle to him and he shook out some of the pills into his palm and offered them to her. She took them, but she wouldn't look at him. He watched as she washed the pills down with water from the bathroom faucet, caught up in her hand, and then she dried her hand and mouth with the hand towel.
"I'm sorry," Daryl said. "I really am sorry, an' I hope that one day you gonna let me make it up to ya, that'cha gonna stop bein' pissed at me."
He shook his head at her.
"I love you," he said. "And I've loved you since I damn near laid eyes on you. Last thing I wanted was to hurt'cha…but I guess that tryin' not ta hurt you, I done just that."
"I love you too," Carol said with a sigh. "I do, and you know that. But I feel like I don't know myself, and I feel, too, like I don't know you, not entirely."
Daryl swallowed and nodded his head slightly at her, just enough to validate her feelings on the subject.
"Maybe we both still got things ta learn," he said. "But…I hope you're gonna give me a chance to learn 'em, and you ain't gonna up an' be done with me."
Carol nodded softly at him.
"I'm not going anywhere," Carol said. "Not physically…and even though I don't know what happened before, even though I don't remember what happened, I don't think that I'm going anywhere mentally."
Daryl sucked in a breath and let it out, her words and her softer tone of voice reassuring to him. She was mad, or she was hurt, but she was going to get over this.
He stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away just a little, but then she came back toward him and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him, and rubbed her back with his hands.
"I'm not goin' nowhere neither," he responded. "You be mad if you gotta, but we gonna get through this…an' now we got us a kid ta worry about. We gotta look out for her."