He could tell she was growing restless as they got closer and closer to the general area where her sister was supposed to be buried. She had been honest about the fact that she didn't know exactly where the grave was, having never been allowed to visit, but she knew her parents had gotten special permission from the State in order to be able to bury their youngest daughter somewhere on land they owned. It seemed her family, the Millers, had been big-wigs before shit had started happening and they had been able to pull some strings here and there.
It was more than practical, as he would have been reluctant to enter a cemetery and looked for a single grave amongst many, where there would have been walkers, but Carol had warned him that her parents' estate did not have fences. There was still a chance they could be walking into a populated land where the dead were kings. It had been a place where many people had lived, and more than a few had probably turned. It was all a question of luck, praying that those who had changed had decided to make a trip somewhere else to find food to nourish themselves.
He was willing to take the risk though because he could see how much it meant to her. Having heard her stories, from before the apocalypse and when it had started, he could see so many things he never would have guessed before. She needed to see her sister, to finally free herself of the hold Ed had on her, and he was pretty sure she hadn't realized yet this was the reason she had embarked on this quest. It was both about going back to her roots, to a life before she had become a prisoner in her own house and in her own mind, and about embracing the person she had become. The stories she had told him made it clear to him that she wasn't just on a crusade for her own sake but that she was seeking validation from the only person who mattered, her old self, or maybe the person she thought she should have become. Going back to see her sister was very much a crusade to face her old self, or her previous self and say simply that it was okay to have travelled so many miles both literally and figuratively to get where she was now. He felt like even though she would stand by every choice she had made especially those following her husband's death, Carol had never perhaps pretended to be good with the things she had done while seeking some sort of approval, divine or humane.
He could only relate too well to this quest for validation, though he would never say it out loud. His whole relationship with his brother had been about having Merle say he was doing good, or just plain ok, and he had never gotten it. The Dixon brothers were not that kind of people, even when one of them had been dying to hear the words which would have changed so much for them both. The Dixon brothers would never have been the same with those few words being said, and Daryl would have taken the risk to see their relationship evolve. Who knew, they might have both come out better structured persons. The validation they had never had from society, it had been theirs to grant on each other.
Instead, he had followed. Now he was walking alongside someone who was not afraid to tell him that he was a good man and even if he didn't believe it truly, or wouldn't believe it period, it felt like a whole new chapter in his life was starting. She was relentless though, and wouldn't let him off that hook, that "good guy" hook, even though she never said the words again, and it left a scar on his mind, a scar he welcomed for once, compared to the others he sported. She was giving him what he had never really known he needed, and he wasn't sure how much he needed, but she kept on giving him, just that, whatever it was, that thing that made him think that maybe, just maybe, he had been and would be something else rather than an abused kid who had never really been protected and had had to rely on himself from a very young age. It finally felt like maybe, he didn't have to anymore. Better late than never he supposed. It felt surreal to have had to come so far, and to have had to do so many things he was not proud of in the least to finally hear those words he had craved. The fact that it was Carol, not from the quarry, but from the farm, and the tombs and the prison saying it was another surprise that was not lost on him.
Her stories had given him much to think about, in ways he had not anticipated. The stories, the trajectories the others had followed had sometimes surprised him, or felt like a sure thing for some, yet it all felt alien. He had known those people, and those they had met later on, thanks to Carol's vivid descriptions, he felt like he knew them. It had been in her words.
Like, he had never cared for Lori, as a person when she had been at camp, but when he had heard the way her husband Rick aka Lazarus had treated her when she was pregnant, he had felt ... things for lack of a better word. Carol had not blamed the guy or even Carl the young boy, but he had heard the pain she had felt at the way her friend was being treated, and when Lori had died giving birth to her daughter, Daryl had felt genuinely sad. He was pretty sure he was sadder for Carol than he had been for Lori herself, but still, he had not expected it.
The stories she had told had given him insight on persons who had barely been on his radar back at the quarry, like Glenn. The guy had been so much more than had met the eyes back then, Daryl almost found himself regretting not having gotten to know him. Then again, maybe the boy would not have been worthy of his interest before certain things had happened to him.
It all felt like a parallel universe, in which he could have perhaps found his place but they would never know.
He had only Carol's versions of things, but she had been so candid with everything she had shared, he couldn't believe for a second she could have painted anyone in an unfavorable light to make herself shine. In fact, she had been honest to a fault, questioning her own behavior more than the others. That guy, Lazarus, or Rick, had clearly been a dick with some anger issues, but she still wouldn't say that he had banished her, they had parted ways in her narrative, because she had stopped fitting in the community as the others saw it. From what he had heard, Daryl had to wonder how much the others had agreed with the leaders' choice to exile her. Glenn's girl, Maggie, seemed to have taken a liking to Carol, if the story about her being glad for the survival skills of the grey haired fox were true, and having her thrown out must have rubbed her the wrong way, unless the woman was brain dead, or scared.
It was stupid, but travelling with Carol felt so much like a journey with a good friend, or just a friend, he sometimes forgot about the apocalypse for a second. It had to impact everything that had happened, but sometimes Daryl found himself wondering how much of their true selves people had started showing thanks to the end of the world, knowing they had nothing to lose, and everything to win by being whom they were at heart. Shane, or Sheriff Asshole as he used to think of him had certainly showed his true colors and their many shades as time went by. Daryl felt like if anybody else would have told him that story, he would have felt much more strongly about the part Lori would have played or may have played in the guy's downfall, but the way Carol had explained it, full of nuances and precautions made him see that you couldn't blame the guy's behavior on a woman. It was unfair. He knew Carol's past was very important and significant to the way she told the story, and he was glad for it, in as much as they had so many things in common, even though he had not told her.
It felt like the one step he couldn't take, talk about what he had seen and where he had been, prior to the Apocalypse or after. The most surprising thing to him was the fact that she didn't expect him to share back, to tell her all he had been through. She just gave, through her words, everything she had and everything she stood for without waiting for something in return.
Lazarus had been an ass to ever let her go, no matter what she had done. People in glass houses and all that... The guy was throwing stones and one day, the house would collapse on him. Daryl was glad Carol was out of that house but he was sorry for Carl and baby Judith who would probably still be inside when it would happen.
The life he was living, he wouldn't trade it for the world and his new companion surely made this impression even more certain to him. He didn't know how he would have fitted in, in that group, with Merle and his big mouth, or how he would have been able to deal with his blind toward his brother, and the one he hoped he would have felt towards Carol. He hoped he would have gravitated in her orbit, for what he saw from her now showed him how much she was deserving of his trust.
Those were ifs and maybe, and you couldn't bank on those. Still, he wondered.
This woman was certainly impacting in a big way the way he saw the world. It had been only a few days yet she had become necessary to the way he hoped things would happen next. It barely made sense and once again he blamed it on the apocalypse changing everything. When things went to shit in a second, you only had your instinct and he prided himself on having good instinct. His past had given him the tools, through pain and bad experiences, to judge things and people in the blink of an eye. His opinion could change, certainly, but it didn't happen overnight, and it was generally due to people changing themselves, thus making him change his mind.
But yeah, lots of things to mule over from what she had told him, and the things she hadn't told him, not to mention the way she had told certain things. Everything about her was about layers and reading between the lines, and realizing there were more lines, and still looking for what she meant. It was not because he couldn't understand what she said, but because he just couldn't let it rest. He could see or hear there was more to a story, or that the words she had chosen had a meaning in that story and he wanted to know why. Hell, he needed to know why. She was like a book, where every line was an open door to a new world, and he was suddenly realizing he had been a reader all his life, or maybe she had turned him into one overnight. He just couldn't stop thinking about her words, the way she processed things, the stories she told and the lesson she took from them.
It was a crash course on everything Carol née Miller formerly Peletier stood for, and it was intoxicating.
***
As they came closer to the place where she knew she would find her sister, things got quiet, a bit too calm for Carol's taste. Every day had been about surviving, whether alone or in a group. Every day had been making it to the next day, surviving through the night and adding another notch on the metaphorical wall where she would have marked every day she stayed alive. She wasn't too sure if it would have started with the moment the turn had become public knowledge, or if she had also counted and kept score of every day she had spent under Ed's thumb, no matter when it started it still made a lot of marks on an invisible wall in her head.
The closer they got to her parents' estate, the more memories assaulted her, and she found herself sharing more and more, about before, about a time she hadn't dared think about for so long it felt like a life she had lived previously until she had become Mrs. Peletier.
Songs were coming back to her too, and she found herself humming more often than not. Daryl gave her a slight look when she did it the first few times but he never seemed to mean for her to stop, only looked at her like he was wondering what she was thinking about, yet didn't dare ask. Sometimes she shared, and sometimes, she just enjoyed the melody.
As they were maybe three miles away from their destination, a song got stuck in her head, Imagine by John Lennon, and she found herself chuckling.
It felt like a foreign sound, even more than her humming voice had felt like, for she hadn't really laughed or done anything of the sort in a long time.
"What's so funny?" Daryl asked, and she could see the hint of a smile on his lips, like he couldn't help himself but he also wanted her to have that moment to herself if it needed to stay private.
"Lilah, she loved John Lennon."
He gave her a look, and she went on.
"I don't know how familiar you are with his songs, but there's this song, "Imagine", about a world where there is no war, but when you take the lyrics apart, it seems different now, in this whole new world of ours."
The smile lingered on his lips as she searched for the exact lyrics that had made her laugh.
"Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky."
She wanted to chuckle again.
"It's this fucking world, ain't it? No heaven, no hell below us, as we live in it, with the sky watching as humankind changes drastically. People believe this song is about world peace, and joining the human race as a whole so that there's no war anymore, but it says nothing of the inhumane race, the walkers. What if he had seen it? What if he was already thinking about this world of ours?"
It was silly, but for some reason it stuck in her head.
"John Lennon, the fucking prophet, who would have known?" Daryl finally said.
His smile was so contagious, and it was so silly, she broke out laughing. Of course, that was when hell broke loose, again.
They had been too focused on their private joke, they hadn't seen the couple of walkers and their buddies walking their way. They saw them when those dead men walking were almost upon them, and in trying to get to them the walkers managed to run into a fucking beehive of all things.
Daryl and Carol found themselves swarmed by furious bees, fucking furious bees, who were seeking revenge for the destruction of their home, on the only alive beings around, the two who hadn't come near the bloody hive.
To say they were amazed in a bedazzled fashion would not have been an overstatement. The walkers stopped, as some of the bees tried to have a bite of them before deciding the dead were of no interest to them, but the living were.
"Holy shit," Daryl muttered, as they started running to escape the fucking insects.
This was a first, for both of them. In this world, everything was a danger, the living and the dead, but they hadn't expected nature to turn their back on them either.
They ran and ran as the bees followed, and Carol grabbed Daryl's wrist, as she recognized their surroundings. He didn't try to shake her off, or anything, only let her lead him where she wanted to. There was no "trust me" uttered, it was not needed. If they hadn't been chased by wild bees, she would have gushed. Maybe.
She remembered playing in those parts as a young girl. There was a place they could escape the bees, which were especially aggressive. She wondered if there had been a turn of some sort for them too, or if things happening on Earth had forced everything to be more aggressive. Then again, if their queen had been killed, maybe they were fueled with extra rage? She just didn't know enough about bees. It was 300 yards from where the beehive had been destroyed that she found what she had been looking for, a cliff over a large pond.
Daryl tried to gauge the distance between them and the water, and he must have seen the trust and faith in her eyes, or just have plain trusted her, for he held on her hand, and they jumped into the depths of the water below.
The cool of the water felt more than welcomed on their heated skin, both from the exertion of the run, and the Georgian weather. She was pleased to see she had not been mistaken and this had been the place where her sister and her used to jump into the water during the summer, when they were both children, reckless perhaps, but just brave and carefree. She didn't let go of his hand under the water, and she noticed that he didn't let go either. She made some gestures, meaning they needed to stay under the water for as long as they could, and he nodded. His hair was framing his face in a weird fashion, water playing with the strands, and she wondered how many people ever got to see him look so carefree, for that's what he looked like. The water was washing over his features, and the fatigue seemed to leave his face. He looked younger.
His eyes were open, and he was looking at her too. She wondered what he saw, and what he was thinking but it was neither the time nor especially the place to start a discussion. She could tell she would not last much longer without air, so she started swimming taking him with her. She made a gesture, and they both swam for the surface. Breaking free and breathing in deeply was amazing, she had almost forgotten why they had done what they had done. The bees were gone, having lost interest in them. Emerging from the water, she felt like a new woman. It had been so long since she had been able to submerge herself in water... When on the run on her own, she had never dared let herself be so vulnerable and take a bath in one of the many rivers and lakes of Georgia. It had been painful at times as she had been too aware of the state she was in.
She plunged her head again in the water as she heard him play in the water, immersed himself, and grunt as he seemed to be having so much fun in the lake. They were making noise, allowing themselves to be free. The walkers were slow, and they would have time to see them come if they followed their lead to the water. They laughed, as they swam, enjoying the depth and coolness of the water. It was a break they had never dared hope for. She thought of their weapons, but as they didn't plan to stay in the water forever until they grew gills, she supposed the guns would be fine and they'd be able to dry them.
They swam till their feet finally touched the bottom of the lake, and they got rid of their bags on the dry land, as they swam around just a bit more. It was perfect in its way, a breather, meant to be short but to boost them up for what was to come. She had almost forgotten about her sister, and the rest of their family, the destination of their journey. She forced herself out of the water, watching him play like a young wild dog in the water. He was so free, and she felt like that too. He didn't care about her eyes on him and she felt the same. There was comfort, and even, intimacy. They were strangers but in many ways they were closer than she had been to most of her friends in her whole life.
He finally got back to the shore and emerged from the water, shaking himself like a dog, throwing water everywhere, and she laughed harder. It felt so good to be able to simply laugh.
"Man, that was fun!" He exclaimed and he looked so young in that instant, like he was barely out of teenage hood, like he was not carrying the weight of his personal history on his shoulders… He looked like Atlas free for a moment of his burdens, and she never wanted it to end.
She noticed his eyes on her face and saw that he was doing his best to keep his eyes on hers. She took a look down her shirt and realized that it had become completely transparent. She didn't really care, just basking in the feeling of freedom, yet she felt elated that he was seeing her as a woman, simply a woman, whose tits he tries not to stare at, like civilization hadn't bailed on them. Another feeling she hadn't experience in years, being able to bask in who she was, and not wonder how it would displease her husband.
This was almost too good.
They got to the actual shore, and she took off her shirt, thankful for the tank top underneath even though it was even more transparent than the shirt, as she wrung the shirt in order to get rid of the excess water. She would not be taking her pants off, feeling woman-shy, another long lost feeling. She had great legs, before everything had gone wrong in her life, and then she had lost weight and she wasn't sure where she was at anymore. It felt so out of context, given they were in survival mode, but she allowed herself modesty, and self-consciousness for a bit, not in a destructive self-constrictive fashion, but simply as a woman who didn't want to bare herself almost naked in front of a guy, no matter how good he was, before she felt ready.
Where was this thought coming from?
He turned his back on her, to give her her privacy and started by removing his vest. She kept her eyes on him, ready to shy them away if he took off more than she could handle but she couldn't picture him getting buck naked when they were on the run, no matter how free they felt. Through his dirty shirt, she thought she saw something, and when he removed the piece of garment, she saw it. Them.
Scars. So many scars. Another proof she didn't need of the story that was his and only his to tell.
He seemed to realize she was being silent and had stopped laughing, and spun around like a mad man, pulling back his t-shirt trying to hide this painful reminder of his.
She felt lost, awestruck, and more. There was this look in his eyes, like he was disgusted by what she had seen? But it made no sense. Those scars were part of him, and she would never judge him for what they stood for.
He grunted and grunted some more, as the t-shirt stuck to his back and he looked just about ready to go back in the water or run back to the walkers to make the moment stop.
"Daryl," Carol said softly.
He wouldn't look at her.
"Daryl," she called again. "Please."
There was a look on his face like he wanted to disappear and never ever address what she had witnessed, but this was not who she was, and part of her felt like this was not what he needed.
"Daryl," she said again, sitting on the muddy shore. "You've heard my battered wife stories, and more. You know about the scars I carry inside though they don't show. Don't ever think for a second your scars could mean anything bad for me, or would make me think less of you. You're a survivor, too."
He turned around, and kept on grunting. She didn't push it more, though she felt extremely distressed by the fact on how much he seemed to hate himself, for having shown inadvertently something he was used to keeping a secret. She didn't go around sharing her stories with just anyone, and she hoped it would make him feel like he was not the only one who was vulnerable, but most important that he would realize she did not judge him for his scars, only despised the people who had inflicted them on him.
Words had been her ally so far, but right now they felt like a hindrance, so she kept silent, and hoped to let him cope. She needed him to come back to her or this partnership of theirs was doomed, and it scared her shitless.
Though they were close, they found a spot for the night early on, as Carol needed time before she went back to a place where she had been naïve and free, where she had been a sister and a daughter, and most importantly her very own person. They didn't say a word, the incident with his scars still between them, like a gap they couldn't cross, a tear they couldn't mend. She didn't want to nag, only hoped he would be able to read her the same way he had before and see what he needed to get to be able to understand the words she had spoken.
It was a weird night, as she couldn't sleep, too wired at the thought that she would soon be reaching the end of her journey, and he tossed and turned too, for different reasons that broke her heart.
When morning came, they were on their feet and operational very quickly. No words were exchanged, they just moved forward. They had gotten a bit off track with their detour by the lake, but she didn't mind, actually enjoyed the respite. She had been aiming to come back to this place for so long, she felt like she needed every second she could get before she actually faced it. Funny how you longed for a place to be and a story to reconnect with, only to get so shy before you got there.
They walked slowly by their standards, and he didn't comment. She felt her breathe catch in her throat as she finally saw her parents' summer house, and most importantly, the grave in the middle of the field in front of it.
This was it.
She didn't look at Daryl, she didn't look for walkers or dangers, she only walked forward, slowly still but decidedly, finally feeling like she was ready for whatever happened then and what would happen next.
She got to the grave, and though she had never seen it, she knew it was it, it was where her sister was buried. She wiped some of the plants which had grown on it with her hand, and sat in the dirt, before saying.
"Oh Lilah, my darling. How long I waited to be reunited with you."
This had been home once, but it was not anymore. Lilah though would always be home, and Carol allowed herself to lay down her burden, for a minute then much longer, as she sat by her sister's grave, lovingly caressing the tombstone, feeling like her sister's energy was still out there somewhere, and reaching for her.
"Lilah," she whispered again.
And she let the tears run freely as she finally reconnected with her sister.