AN: Here we go, another chapter here and the last "official" chapter of this story. There will be an epilogue to follow.
I hope that you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl sat at the kitchen table, long after Carol and Sophia had gone to bed one night, and pretended to be working on paperwork that he was supposed to be filling out for the adoption process of Sophia. The truth of the matter was, though, that he'd finished the paperwork with time to spare. There wasn't anything there being asked that he couldn't answer right off the top of his head.
He'd memorized nearly everything about himself and about Carol, at least everything that he knew about her, simply because he'd spent so much time answering questions and filling out forms over the years that it had all become second nature to him. He imagined one day, as the years rolled past, that it might end up being second nature to him to answer all the same types of questions about Sophia.
They still had so much to learn about the girl, but every day it seemed they were learning a little bit more about her. And truthfully? Daryl felt like he was learning more about himself and more about Carol in the process. Sophia's simple presence was changing them both, but it was a change for the better.
Daryl went to his safe and pulled out all the paperwork he had there just to check behind himself before he delivered the documents the next day and put all the final pieces into place for Sophia to be undeniably their legal child. The safe held almost every document he had from his life and from Carol's, and now it was housing documents from Sophia's life, that was important at all. Some of them, in fact, probably weren't important any longer, but still he held onto them. He didn't want to throw anything of their lives away, even if it was still the papers, now obsolete, that reminded him of the time, so many years ago, when he'd taken a leap of faith to become the ward of a woman that the county had gone so far as to declare "unable to care for herself". It was funny to him now…because she took care of him, and she took care of Sophia, and she was certainly more than capable of taking care of herself. He felt, now, that it had always been a case of no one being willing to listen to her, no one be willing to validate anything that she might say or any feeling that she might have.
Maybe it was a frightening thing…the idea that a woman could have feelings and thoughts about things. Daryl certainly knew more than his share of people who thought it was. So the idea had been, and Carol had been a victim of that ideology, that instead of having to deal with the terrorizing fact of human emotion, or the even more horrifying fact that women might be just as capable of reason as everyone else and not the human dolls that some people, like his brother, wanted them to be, that the best thing to do was to silence Carol. And if she wouldn't be silenced easily enough, then she could be rendered outside of herself enough that it would be easier to put her somewhere, out of sight and out of mind.
Daryl lit a cigarette and reclined back in his chair, flipping through the thick pile of papers. Every time he did it, the same thoughts crossed his mind. Everything about his life…everything about the woman that he loved, everything about their life together, and now everything about Sophia…could be reduced to a pile of paper suitable to fit in a safe.
He stopped his flipping when he came across a scrap of paper. He'd tucked it into the pile not long after he'd first picked Sophia up from the home that she was in. The handwriting was his. He'd sought out the information, but he'd never done anything with it really. Once or twice he'd looked at it. Once or twice it had made him take the long road home. But he'd never really done anything about it.
Perhaps there wasn't really anything to do about it, and that's why he'd tucked it into the pile of papers along with everything else.
Daryl fingered the scrap of paper a moment while he finished the cigarette that he was smoking. He snubbed the butt of the cigarette out in the ashtray that he'd brought with him for his work and then he put the papers back in the safe, keeping the scrap in his pocket. Finally, he scratched, with the same pen he'd used to fill out the paperwork that would be delivered to its recipient the next day, a quick note on a piece of paper that he'd gone out for cigarettes and would be back, just in case his departure from the house alarmed anyone…which he doubted it would.
Daryl slipped out the house as quietly as he could, worked to get the car cranked in the chilly weather, and pulled away from his house, looking back at the one light in the window that he'd left burning to welcome himself back home.
There was a store that sold tobacco not two streets down from where they lived. The old man that ran the store was a widower and kept the place open most nights until after eleven, even if the store posted its hours as closing at nine.
Daryl didn't really need cigarettes, though. He had enough to get by…but he figured he might stop on his way home and pick up some just so his message hadn't been a lie. He made it a point never to lie to Carol, even if she was unaware of the message that he'd left her.
First, though, he had another stop to make. It was a stop that would take him to the next town over. The postal code between the two towns suggested they were different places on the map. The smaller, neighboring town boasted all the necessities like a grocery, a butcher's shop, a post office, and a small tobacco stand. But really? If anyone was counting the distance in miles travelled they'd have practically been the same small town.
He hadn't even moved far away…Daryl would have imagined he'd move if only to get away from the "shame" that had driven him to such extreme measures.
But then…he probably believed that she had never left Sunny Meadows. When people throw something out, they seldom worry about its whereabouts later.
Daryl drove to the address that he'd found months ago…that he'd found in a time and place that almost seemed like it belonged to a different world. He slowed the car as he neared it, having passed it enough times out of curiosity that he knew when to stop. He could stop completely at this hour, given that there simply weren't people around and nobody at all had any interest in what he was doing.
That house, like the ones around it, showed signs that whoever was inside was still up. The windows shined with light that was likely on in a living room, though the part of the house visible through the windows was really only walls and didn't give Daryl anything to go on. He sat in the car and stared at the house. He lit a cigarette, rolled the window down, and didn't even bother to care if anyone saw him sitting there, parked on the side of the street, smoking a cigarette and staring at a stranger's house.
From what Daryl had found out, his secret spies working to gather what information they could without looking too curious about anything, Ed Peletier Jr. lived in that house with his mother, widowed after the passing of her son. As far as Daryl knew, they lived alone. As far as he knew, the man had never married. Of course, anyone could feel sorry for the woman who might have married a man like him.
Daryl chain smoked and studied the house. There was movement inside. There was proof of life inside.
There were nights when Daryl thought that life, any life at all, was too good for the man.
But now, as he sat there and thought about it, he realized maybe he'd been wrong.
He could be bitter on Carol's behalf if he wanted to be. He could wish any number of ills and terrible woes on the man who lived within those walls with the woman who had gone right along with the decisions he'd made regarding his once fiancé.
But it didn't serve any purpose.
Carol had forgiven him, at least as much as she could. She'd almost forgotten about him entirely by now. If she saw anything of him at all in her daughter, the daughter that he'd kept her from spending so much time with, she never mentioned it to Daryl.
And Sophia didn't know him and didn't care about him. She didn't even care to practice his name to see how it might taste on her tongue. She might share his DNA, but she had nothing else of his that was worth mentioning, and he certainly had nothing of hers…not even a single feeling.
The more that Daryl considered it, the more he realized that there was nothing to be gained from wishing even the worst possible existence on Ed Peletier Jr. Maybe, even, the worst possible thing that could have ever happened to the man had already happened…and he'd brought it on himself.
Because Ed had been so concerned about what people might say about him and his family that he'd let go of someone that Daryl considered the most important person in the world. Ed had been so concerned about what people might say…people who were going to find something to say with or without him offering fodder to them…that he had given up the chance to have a life that Daryl knew was a wonderful life, a beautiful life…a real life worth living.
And now? Now for all his concern about other people, he was living in a poor quality split level home with his mother. And, more than that, if he had a soul at all he was living with the guilt of what he'd done. Because even if he put Carol under lock and key, like he'd tried to do, and even if he'd tried to get rid of the evidence of what he'd done, what he was apparently so damn ashamed of, by getting rid of Sophia like she was nothing more than something he could erase like an error scratched on paper, he hadn't really succeeded in doing any of that. And in the back of his mind, he had to know it.
Just because something was covered over, buried, or hid away, didn't mean that it ceased to exist. Just because you no longer kept the evidence of what you'd done in your life, didn't mean that you'd never done it. There was no undoing anything that was done. The past was carved in stone, and whether or not you broke the rock, it didn't make the facts any less true.
So maybe there was nothing more for Daryl to wish on Ed. The existence that he lived was likely a very sorry one. Maybe, if there was anything at all that Daryl might wish on him, it was that he have a very long and very good memory, and that, if he had a conscience at all, it continue to gnaw at him for all the days of the very long life that Daryl decided to wish for him…if for nothing else than to prolong his misery.
Because Daryl didn't care what people had to say. He didn't even care what his own brother had to say. He never had and it didn't make sense to worry about what people said…they were going to say it anyway.
And for that, he'd found in, perhaps, the most unlikely of places the most wonderful woman that he could ask to spend his life with. Maybe she was crazy, like they'd said she was, or maybe she wasn't. It didn't matter to Daryl one way or the other. He figured, if the truth was told, everyone was at least a little bit crazy. And now, in addition to a wife that he loved more than he loved the air it took to keep him living, he had a beautiful daughter and all the years of his life, which he hoped to be very long as well to prolong his enjoyment, to spend getting to know and watching the woman that she'd become…the woman he hoped to help her become.
Daryl opened the car door and stepped out of it into the darkened street. He flicked the cigarette butt to the ground and found his lighter again. The flame from it lit up the space just around him as he pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket and held it to the flame, pinching it between his thumb and finger until the flame consumed it to a point that he let it go to flutter to the ground, the flame eating the rest of it on its descent.
And then he got back in the car, cast one last glance at the house where he imagined the most miserable of all men resided, and drove back in the direction of his home.
So that it couldn't be said that Daryl Dixon lied to his wife, he would stop at the tobacco shop and buy a pack of cigarettes from the old man that worked there. He'd stand and listen for a moment as the old man told him some story or another from his life, lonely now that he was left alone in a world where he'd never intended to be without the woman that he was married to for the better half of a century, and then he'd go home to his own wife.
And home to a life that some had said, in one way or another, that they wouldn't care to have.
But then, Daryl never really cared much for what people had to say.
And to him? His life was as good as it got.
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AN: So there we go, the final "official" chapter of the story. There is an Epilogue, though, and I'm going to try to get it up for you as soon as possible!