AN: Here we go, another little chapter. I'm excited. This was something of a "hump" that I wanted to get over (and possibly could be why I kept getting stuck) and we're going to see some things that I hope you'll really enjoy with this story.

I hope you like the chapter! Let me know what you think!

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When Daryl came into the bedroom, he wasn't entirely sure whether or not Carol was asleep. She was in the bed and she was still, the dim light of the lamp burning on his side of the bed so that he wasn't left tripping over his feet trying to find the space, and she didn't move when he entered the room.

Daryl stripped out of his clothes and moved his pajama pants from where she'd folded them on the dresser to near his bed so that he could put them on first thing in the morning or if he decided to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was a practice he'd been known to skip a good deal if it was just him and Carol occupying the space, but now there was a teenaged girl in the next room and he didn't think that she needed to be intimately acquainted with what his underwear looked like.

Daryl groaned at the cool softness of the bed as he eased into place and then he reached, gently trailing his fingertips over Carol's arm that was visible above the blankets. She didn't move at first and he leaned and kissed her shoulder.

Most nights that would be an invitation to her to roll over and speak to him…to share with him something about her day or ask him something that she'd been waiting to ask him. Most nights it would have been an invitation, even, for her to welcome him into her embrace for love making.

Tonight it was more a request that she be awake…a request that she speak to him at all. It was, more than anything, the only affection he feared he might ever get from her.

"I love you," he said softly, taking her stillness to his touch as an indication that she'd already slipped off to sleep. As much as he might want to talk to her, she needed to sleep too. Maybe rest would soften the sting of everything else that was happening.

Carol surprised him by rolling suddenly toward him and with a great deal of force, shaking the whole bed hard enough to bump the headboard hard against the wall behind it.

She was frowning deeply. At the moment all Daryl felt that he could do was stare at her in shock at the movement that he hadn't been expecting at all.

"You weren't asleep?" Daryl asked.

Carol didn't respond and he was pretty sure that it was because she was fighting, as indicated by every single muscle in her face, not to cry. He lifted up and rested his head on his hand, his elbow crooked into his pillow, and shook his head slightly at her.

"I don't know how ta make it up to ya," he said. "I don't know how ta make ya know how sorry I am…an' I been thinkin'…all day long I been thinkin'…I shoulda told you a long time ago about the baby. I didn't know about Sophia…not…hell…not like she is right now…but I knowed you had a baby and I shoulda told ya that. We mighta found her earlier an' I messed the whole damn thing up."

He stuttered out his words because he, just as much as Carol, was fighting back his own emotions. Much of his relationship with Carol had felt like putting together some kind of tower with shaking hands. He'd slowly and carefully put everything into place, all the while fearing that it would crash down, but it still hadn't prepared him for the impact that it would make on him when it did crash down.

He had hurt her and that had always been the very last thing that he wanted to do. He'd never wanted her to hurt or to suffer. He'd wanted to build her a fairy land, if that's what it took, just to make her happy and protect her from the ways that other people might hurt her.

But in the end, he'd been her worst enemy.

"I love you," he offered again, the words choking out. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, but it didn't go anywhere. It stayed right where it was, threatening to choke the life out of him.

And she stared at him, hurt all over her features, her eyes dancing back and forth and glittering as the tears they held reflected the light from the lamp.

She straightened up a little in the bed, moved to sit almost but ended up leaning more than reaching a fully upright position.

"I love you," Carol echoed. She shook her head slightly. "I didn't stop."

Daryl sat up then, moving to a completely upright position. The change helped a little with the choking feeling, but it didn't take it away entirely.

"She's a beautiful girl," Carol said, her own words showing clearly that she was choking. "She's a beautiful girl…and she's sweet and…"

She broke off and Daryl found that really all he had at the moment was to nod at her. Sophia was beautiful and she seemed to be very sweet. She seemed to be, from what he could tell, all the things that he thought Carol was. Maybe, even, she was a little more open than Carol…but then that might very well be something that Carol's experiences surrounding Sophia in the first place had brought about.

"She didn't deserve to be…I don't deserve…" Carol choked on whatever she was trying to say and finished simply by shaking her head. Her sobs didn't come out in loud sounds, but there was a flooding down her cheeks that shook Daryl enough that he got out of the bed and found her a handkerchief. She didn't take it from him when he offered it so he mopped at her face for her, finally catching her chin in his hand.

"She's just like ya," he said, not minding his own voice in the moment. "She's…just like ya…an' she don't seem to me to be all that worried, ya know? About what she ain't had? She don't seem to be worried all that much. Seems to me she's just here now. And she's makin' the best she can of her situation. Carol, you ain't hurt her and she knows it. She knows you're…well…you're her Ma and you here now."

"I don't know how to be her mother," Carol said, still shaking her head despite his efforts to hold her face still with his hand. "I don't know what to do."

Daryl felt the emotions that had been strangling him evaporating at the moment with the need to try and take care of Carol. He'd imagined that when her dams broke she might lose her mind. She might become the woman, again, that she'd apparently been before…someone so out of touch with reality that she needed to be locked away from the world.

But right now she just seemed like someone who was hurting, and that seemed normal enough.

Daryl forced a smile, still holding her face so that she wouldn't duck her head or turn away from him.

"What was you gonna do if we had us a kid?" Daryl asked. "You wanted us to have a kid, didn't you? What was you gonna do to be that one's Ma?"

She stared intently at him but the jerking motions of her body wracked by sobs stopped. There were still tears leaking from her eyes, but she let him mop at those and at her nose while he waited for her to respond.

And finally she did.

"It was going to be different," Carol offered, her voice sounding only a little clearer than it had before. "I was going to be different. It's different. Babies…they need certain things."

"Yeah, I reckon they do," Daryl commented. "What do they need?"

"Food…care…comfort," Carol said, slowly ticking the things off, her voice growing clearer with every word she added to the checklist that she'd made in her mind. "They need to be held and loved. They need…love."

Daryl chuckled.

"And 'cause she's fourteen she don't?" He asked.

"It's not the same," Carol said.

Daryl shook his head.

"It ain't the same," he said. "Not at all. But that girl? She needs food alright…and I imagine she wouldn't exactly object to a little of everything else you got to offer if you're willin' to give it to her."

Daryl didn't know if he was allowed to, but he couldn't stop himself. He gently kissed the quivering lips in front of him, pressing his own lips against them to still their shaking.

"Just like a kid," Daryl said when he broke the kiss, "she don't want her Ma to be sad. Me and her already got that in common. So…maybe for her you could try not to be so sad. She said, if it makes ya feel better, that she don't aim to run away. She's just gonna stay here and stick it out and hope you don't keep on bein' sad."

"I wish I could go back," Carol said. "I wish I could give her everything that…she missed."

Daryl sighed.

There wasn't any way to turn back time for any of them. He couldn't do things differently…she couldn't do things differently…even Sophia couldn't change a single moment of her past. It was set in stone.

Carol slumped forward a little and Daryl pulled her, very nearly like a human rag doll, into his arms and she came more willingly than he'd expected. She leaned against him, her body clearly exhausted with the weight of everything.

"Can't go back," he said finally. "But…might can give her what she missed."

Carol pulled away from him ever so slightly and he pulled her back, wrapping his arms tight around her to let her know that he wasn't going to release her.

"She called me Daddy," he mused for a moment, strumming his fingers on Carol's back and relishing the fact that she'd let him back in for the moment.

"You're her Daddy," Carol offered quietly. Her voice was barely coming out in a whisper and Daryl wondered if she might sleep there in his arms. At the moment he wasn't against anything she wanted to do so long as she didn't return to hating him.

"I can't go back and change what I done," Daryl said. "I can't go back an' tell you everything I knew. An' we can't change nothin' about Sophia's life up to now…but…I got some ideas about what we could do for her. If you wanna…I mean."

Carol pulled away then and Daryl let her up. She looked at him, big eyed, but not teary eyed this time.

"What do you mean?" Carol asked.

Daryl touched her cheek and she brought her hand up to catch his, holding it against her skin for a moment. She changed the position of his hand and nuzzled her face into his palm and he cupped her cheek.

In front of his eyes, Carol was becoming someone different. But she wasn't becoming the distant, crazy person that he had feared she would become. If anything, she was, at that very moment, shedding off some of the cover from herself that he hadn't even realized she was still wearing. She looked different to him all in an instant, and she felt different.

And Daryl had welcomed every one of her changes before, so this one wasn't going to be any different.

"You and me need ta sleep," Daryl said. "Sophia's gotta meet her family. Tomorrow we havin' us a birthday party."

Carol looked at him, clearly confused and he smiled softly at her.

"Ain't everyday our baby girl gets her first birthday party," Daryl said.