In the end, he made them dinner with the food she had stored. He tied one of her hands to the chair and gave her a spoon to feed herself with, saving her from the shame of having to be spoon fed by anybody.
This was not Carol from the quarry.
When they were done, he arranged his mat on the floor, and then hers, making sure she could see him handle her weapons. It was a point he felt needed to be made as he had told Joe: she was his responsibility and her gear had become his. It felt wrong to deprive someone of their freedom but he didn't trust the others not to be waiting for her escape to have their chance with her. He didn't know what to do, in order to prevent her from escaping.
"I don't suppose you'd let me swear I won't run out tonight?" she said, with a bitter look.
"Sure, 'cause I'm an idiot like that. You'd run out in the morning, having kept your promise and making a fool out of me."
She had a smirk even though he was clearly seeing through her act.
"Pick a position to sleep in," he told her. "And no funny business."
He showed her a spot very near to the one she would be occupying, and it was clear that he would be able to grab her if she intended anything. He saw something in her eyes, a brief flash of fear tainted with annoyance and he wondered how she was doing with this whole "claimed" thing. She hid her feelings well, but there was something in the way she looked around when she thought he wasn't looking that made it clear she was ready to bolt. He couldn't expect her to trust him, he sure knew he wouldn't in her place. Yet he tried his best, to be firm and dangerous but fair. He hoped she could see that.
"Pick a position," he repeated.
Begrudgingly, she did so. When she was in place he used the rope with which he had retied her after dinner, and made an intricate knot so that she wouldn't be able to leave, even if she wanted to.
"Here," he said. "Don't try anything, I'll know."
The smallest noise would wake him up and he had made it so she would need to cause lots of noise to escape. He laid on his mat, and closed his eyes.
Carol spent the first hour or so thinking of ways to get out of the knots he had tied around her hands. The man was a hunter, and he had skills there but she had hoped that her years as being a prey would have given her a way out. No luck there.
She then looked at him and saw a twitch in his cheek, and a tremor somewhere near his hip that would tend to indicate he was faking sleep. How appropriate. What where they, two idiots playing a stupid game in the dark?
However, she didn't want to call him out on it. She closed her eyes and pretended along, if only to keep the status quo going just a bit longer.
Her life had been shattered, once again, she thought. She was supposed to be on her way, but getting "claimed" or whatever they wanted to call, it hadn't been in the cards. She called herself an idiot. Of course she hadn't planned on getting caught but this, this just went beyond and took the cake, being captured by Daryl from the quarry. When the others had come inside the house, she had managed to hide most of her things and she had tried to hide herself, but one of them, the one whose ankle she broke, had seen something in the dark where she had been hiding and she had been caught.
She wished she could say it had been the scariest time of her life, but it wasn't. It came a close second, though. It didn't take a degree in psychology to see that those people were the very definitions of trouble and evil. She had fought, used her fists and her claws, tried to bite them but to no avail. They had carried her out of the house, too happy about their discovery of her to think about ransacking the place. When she had spotted Daryl, it had felt like an out of body experience. She had seen herself being manhandled and then she had heard him call out his claim on her. She had seen herself still fighting, but part of her had been gone, so far away.
He was a ghost from her past. They hadn't been in the same community for a very long time, but she remembered him and his loud brother. She remembered the way the latter used to treat his younger brother, like he was a burden he had to carry around when Daryl could hold his own. Many nights he had provided the camp with food to eat when Merle had been too busy trying to sweet talk in his very special way Andrea. The two brothers had been like day and night, though which was which remained to be determined. She just knew Daryl had participated when Merle had only ever done so when he needed something. They hadn't fit, but Merle had taken the cake. He had been on his worst behavior more often than not. Carol wondered how much the group's attitude toward the Dixon brothers had shaped their way of interacting all together. She wondered if Daryl had provided for them because he had wanted to make a gesture, or out of habit, having been a hunter before the world had gone to shit, and needing something to remind him of what used to be. At least, she thought he had been a hunter. Lord knew he had been handy with his crossbow
Then one morning, they had been gone, and Lori's husband had come back Lazarus style. The two hillbillies had soon been forgotten, or maybe just pushed out of mind as they were out of sight when they had more pressing problems to deal with. She had wondered what had happened to them, especially to Daryl. She had seen the way he sometimes looked at her husband, and at Sophia, and she had known instinctively that he knew what was going on. She had known then he was a survivor, and she had wondered if she would get to be one, too, and if her daughter would have a future.
Carol forced herself to breathe evenly, to maintain the illusion of sleep, but her heart was breaking again and again. Rick coming back to camp had been a big event, but what had followed had been even bigger. Ed had gotten bit and eaten in bits, along with many of their campmates. She should have felt free but she hadn't. She remembered that morning when they were disposing of the bodies, making sure nobody came back from the dead and she saw again in her head the way Shane had pierced her husband's skull. He had looked at her, like he was doing something she should thank him for, and maybe he had, but it had left her with a feeling of not having seen things through. IT had felt in a way too similar to when he had beaten Ed into a bloody pulp. The intent was good she supposed but he had ignored everything that came with it, like the fact that he wouldn't always be around to protect her from him, or that she would still need to live with her husband. She knew he had meant to do her a favor, but it hadn't felt freeing or liberating. Even when the others dumped Ed into a shallow grave, she still had felt his influence over her. He had ruled her life for too long for her to simply shake his hold off. Sometimes she had dreamt about bashing in his dead skull, before the burial, in order to be proactive and not passive as she had been forced to be, but what would it have changed really? A lot, she supposed.
It should have been the start of a new life, but an encounter with a herd of walkers had been quick to remind her that nothing in life ever went fairly, that there always was tit for tat. Sophia had disappeared, chased by walkers, and Carol had found herself crying and dying inside, even more than when she had been abused. They were supposed to be free...
They had ended up at the Greene Estate, and the others had been so worried about making this settlement permanent that they had forgotten to look for her daughter. She had told Rick she wanted a gun, and that she wanted to go look for her baby, and he had looked ashamed of his oversight. She didn't care for his shame, she only wanted Sophia back. They had started going on runs and she had learnt to shoot, and to use a knife against a walker as her heart hardened and hardened. At camp, she would hear Hershel preaching about the walkers being people they knew, but they weren't anymore. At best, they were people they used to know. The CDC had made that clear. You didn't come back and there was no reasoning with you after you turned.
Then the barn secret had come out, and Carol had gotten this sick feeling in her stomach. One by one the walkers had flowed out, and the group had started shooting them dead, for good. She hadn't been able to partake, overcome with a sense of doom that had made no sense, not until her precious baby had stumbled out of the barn. Except it wasn't her baby anymore, and it was obvious it hadn't been in a while. She remembered vaguely people looking at her, waiting for her to crash and burn, and she also remembered telling Shane to hold his fire. She should have protected her daughter, like she had done when they had been living with Ed, but she had failed, and she had known in her bones what she needed to do.
She had gotten Rick's weapon, and begging for forgiveness, she had shot a bullet in the monster who was inhabiting her little girl's body. She could still smell the gunpowder and the way the shot had rung in her ears, so loud. She was certain it hadn't been so loud for the others around, but to her it had felt like a canon going off. Sometimes she wondered how she had managed to do it, to get Rick's gun, and shoot her baby. She remembered being determined not to let the darkness linger in Sophia's body a second longer but she also remembered the desperation. The realization that her baby would never come back had doomed on her but not as hard as the fact that she needed to act. She had cried, as the walkers came out, and as her daughter's shell came out. She had fallen on the floor the moment the deed had been done, crying harder than ever, asking the heavens why they had inflicted that on her. She never asked herself though if it had been the right move or if she should have let someone kill the girl walker. She had been her baby, and it had been her responsibility as her mother to make sure Sophia was finally free, no matter how painful it had been. Heartbreak didn't even begin to cover it.
Carol tried to roll over, feeling the press of tears behind her eyelids and not wanting Daryl to see them. He already had the upper hand, whatever that meant, he couldn't witness her grief, too. She needed some things to remain her own. He could have her AK47, and her knife, and her other guns, but this grief, it was hers and hers only.
Lori had tried to be there for her, but she had been dealing with her own drama and Carol had been left alone with bad dreams as her life had already turned into a nightmare. She had gone into automatic mode, taking care of her fellow survivors, making sure dinner was on the table so to speak, and that they had what they needed. Maggie Greene, bless her heart, had been there, and even though she never managed to say what Carol needed to hear, or said the wrong things entirely, having someone acknowledge the hell she was going through had given her some slight relief. What had happened to Sophia was on her, but there was someone who could relate, having had to metaphorically pull the trigger on someone she had loved in that fucking barn. They never mentioned it explicitly, but Maggie giving Glenn the go ahead when her mother had come out of the barn had been soul crushing for the young woman, in more ways than one.
Months had gone by, it had been a blur, Shane had gotten killed by Carl after trying to off Rick, and then there had the mass herd, and they had been on the road. The prison had looked like a haven for all of five minutes before T-Dog died in order to save her, and Lori had died giving birth to her perfect daughter. Carol remembered too vividly the days she had spent in that cell where she had locked herself, trying to survive, not because she wanted to but because T-Dog deserved better than to have her give up. There had been ghosts in that cell. Sometimes Ed would appear to her, and be his former despicable self taunting her with her failures. Sophia had appeared, too, though never when her father was around. She had never said anything, just looked at her mother with her doll in her arms and Carol had wept. She had gotten weaker and weaker until one day, Lilah, her younger sister had appeared. Lilah had been the crazy daughter in the Miller family, and she had killed herself in a parachute accident. It had been years since Carol had allowed herself to think of her. Ed had forbidden her to attend her funeral, saying her sister had it coming and he didn't care for appearances. He only wanted his dinner on the table at 7PM on the dot.
Lilah appearing had been everything. Sophia had looked so much like this aunt she had never met, Carol had suddenly gotten a glimpse of who her daughter could have become if luck had been on their side. Lilah had told her that she was still alive, and that she owed them, to both her and Sophia to survive. Lilah had said that no one would be coming, and that it was up to her, to make them proud, to be the survivor and the strong woman she should have been all along. Back when she was married to Ed, Carol had often had the feeling that her sister had gotten especially reckless, or maybe just adventurous, as if she was trying to live for her older sister by proxy.
So, with Lilah cheering on, before she disappeared when Carol finally opened the door of her cell, Carol came out and re-entered the world. Having taken a leaf from Rick's book, she had covered herself in walker gut coming out, so that she would stand a chance in hell to make it back to the others.
The days she had spent in that cell had changed so many things. Carol always wanted to be of help, and take care of the people she cared for. Sure, they had thought she was dead and hadn't come for her, but when she had reappeared, they had taken her back in right away. As Maggie had helped her wash the guts from her skin, she had said something, about Carol having more lives than a cat. She had grabbed her hand and told Carol, "and I'm glad for it".
So Carol had carried on. Lori's death... It was another thing she was not done grieving for. She kept on being herself, she kept on helping when she could, and she took turns watching the prison. She told Andrea to kill the Governor, knowing too well how a charismatic man could turn into a monster in the blink of an eye, if he was not one to begin with. She had met Michonne, Tyreese, Sasha and the rest. She had made room in her heart for them, she had made it her business to help when she could. If they didn't have each other, then what did they have really?
She had learned the hard way a lesson she had thought she already knew. Trying to protect her new family from the disease spreading, she had killed Karen and David, throwing a piece of her soul in the pyre she lit their bodies on. Rick banished her for it, taking her out of the prison to do it, then leaving her behind. If one part of her understood what he was trying to say or to do, the rest of her had been crushed. She had given them everything that was left of her, and it hadn't been enough. She had sat on the council while Rick played farmer, she had trained the children, hoping to give them a chance her Sophia hadn't had, and in the end, she had been left alone, in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of the Apocalypse, at the mercy of this new world.
Carol carried no hate for Rick. She had been angry the first days, but the guilt in her had decided that he had done what he thought was fair, as she had, and their visions had clashed too much for them to be able to stay at the prison together. He had a baby and a teen boy who was growing up day after day. Her leaving made sense. It was exile too, she was only too aware. It was a wound she carried with her, another one.
She had decided to travel North of Georgia, hoping to finally see her sister's tomb. She needed a purpose, otherwise she would have been dead. She had traveled, and gotten to this little town, who had been infected-free, but not danger-free. And now here she was.
The woman she had been back at the quarry had been swept away, and the woman she had been at the prison had burnt away alongside the bodies of the sacrifices she had made for the safety of the group. She was a lone wolf, surviving on her own, trying to make it one day at a time until she got to see her sister's grave and she would find herself a new goal. She had thought about going back to the quarry, to finally face Ed or his grave and say her piece to the man who had been a coward and a tyrant, making her life hell
She opened one eye and saw that Daryl was still sleep-pretending. She wondered if she could trust him. The company he kept... Yet, at the same time, the abused bond was still strong, and she didn't know if it was fate playing another trick on her or if they were there.
She felt like she was supposed to react differently and to be different period, but so many things had happened in these past few years. She felt anger when she thought about how close she had been to Lilah's grave. She didn't resent Daryl, only herself, for allowing herself to be caught. It felt like Ed all over again, but Daryl was not Ed, and she was not that woman anymore. She didn't know why she trusted the hunter but she did. She wondered if he was expecting her to cry, to beg for her life. Part of her wondered if he meant to abuse her sexually as he had hinted when speaking with his leader, but their evening together seemed to prove that was not in the cards, for which she was grateful. He had had the opportunity to rape her and hadn't, making sure she was safe instead no matter how much she hated his method. He had cooked and talked. Daryl from the quarry hadn't been a talker. This version of Daryl was no chatterbox either but she felt l like he had gone the extra mile and forced himself to say things out loud that he wouldn't have said otherwise, in order to establish some kind of trust. If he was playing her, she swore to herself she would slit his throat in his sleep no matter the punishment. She could tell he was counting on their bonds as former victims, and she would make him pay if he abused it. She would not be a toy or a punching ball anymore.
Hell, how did she know he had been abused she suddenly wondered. Her guts seemed dead set on believing it and she supposed it was all she had left in this world. Back at the quarry, when she had crossed his path with a new mark on her face, he had never looked away in disgust or with pity. He had looked at her in the way only a fellow abuse victim could. Shitty bond to have but she felt deep down that it was there then and still was now.
Who were they, and how did they fit with each other now? They had barely known each other before, apart from that feeling in her gut. She found herself trusting him not to abuse his position of power over her but that didn't mean she was okay with his claiming her or whatever the fuck that meant. She had heard his excuse about protecting but didn't they all say that? Ed had said the same thing before cloistering her in their house, "for her own good". She immediately discarded that thought though. They had been strangers and were still strangers and while she had a hard time buying his logic, she could acknowledge it for what it was. She asked herself if he believed what he was saying, and the answer was affirmative in her mind.
She was but too aware that abuse victims often became abusers in their own time and the marauders seemed to belong to that category if they were not plain sadists. However, Daryl seemed different. The care he had taken with her, it was unnecessary if he planned to rape her. Lulling her into a false sense of safety was a dream as she would never feel safe around the other men. He might not have known her but he had seen things at the quarry, like they all had, and he had to remember that she would not fall for another abuser. She found herself wondering what tomorrow would be made of and what happened to claimed people. She only knew or felt that Daryl was perhaps the only good guy left in this world and while she would escape if she could, there was something about the man that made her feel like their shared experiences made them kindred spirits, for lack of a better word. She didn't know what that meant, if it was a weakness or a strength, and she wondered if there would be a way for her to turn him against his companions, if only to let her escape and keep going, away from them.
She almost moved but didn't, wanting to keep the sleeping charade in play. This was too soon to be contemplated, but she couldn't lie and pretend she didn't hope there would be a chance later. In the meantime she had to follow his lead. But then what? Would he protect her, as he seemed to think he was, would he let her show him that she didn't need protecting? Did she want that? Did she want out?
Those questions plagued her mind as she finally drifted to sleep.