AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Daryl went into things determined not to push anyone to say anything that they didn't want to say. They could, essentially, shape their realities and their pasts however they wanted. Still, he was happy to let anyone unload anything that they felt the need to get off their chests, as well.
Confessing to their new friends—friends, he was sure, who would soon become family—would serve as a sort of catharsis for all of them in ways. More, he was certain, would come out with time, but today they were allowed to choose which parts of themselves they wanted to share and, consequently, to accept and keep.
If Daryl had expected any kind of negative reaction, backlash, or even animated surprise from their new travelling companions, then he would have been sorely disappointed.
Daryl, himself, shared that he had had a brother, and that he'd lost his brother. He shared enough to say that Merle had been handcuffed to a roof for being a crystal addict who was, at the time, high on crystal and, after cutting his hand off to get off the roof, they'd been separated for a while. Upon finding his brother alive, he'd simply lost him again when, in an attempt to keep the group from having more trouble to deal with, his brother had died trying to deal with it himself. He shared that there had been good and bad times with past group members, and that they had been through an exhausting stream of what had seemed like never-ending impossible scenarios with people who wanted nothing more than to watch what was left of the world burn.
He'd been the one, too, to explain that he'd come up with the knee-jerk not-exactly-truths that had been told, and he'd been the one that had admitted that, though he and Carol weren't officially married, they'd been together, at least in some sense of the word, for a long time. He had loved her, he'd explained, without feeling the need to go into other details, since just after the world had been turned upside down by the appearance of Walkers.
He told everyone, too, that they would love to be married if they were willing to humor them by having a simple ceremony and serving as witnesses.
For a moment, that had distracted their travelling companions from even the fact that they were making confessions and telling their life stories. Immediately, Melodye and Sadie had fallen into "wedding plans" and, before Daryl even knew what was happening, the two of them had declared that the ceremony needed to take place as soon as they were on the homestead that they intended to make their own. That way, Daryl could officially carry his new bride over the threshold of their new home. Then, of course, when they were settled in enough to pass the night, they could be granted the night off from keeping watch to celebrate their honeymoon.
Carol was the one to draw them back in, and she thanked them for their understanding and their willingness to help them have a ceremony of sorts to celebrate their commitment to each other. She told them, too, that they hadn't been entirely honest about their family.
"I had a daughter," Carol said. "Sophia. From a previous marriage. My husband died early—at the start of all this. He was…abusive. An asshole, really. I'm not sure that's even a strong enough word for Ed. I haven't missed him a single day since he died. Sophia was—the sweetest little girl in the world. She'd never hurt a fly. Those were the earliest days and none of us really knew what we were doing. She got separated from us, running from Walkers, and someone in our group went after her. He left her behind. He said it was to kill the Walkers that were after her. She went missing, and we…Daryl, really…looked for her for a while. When we found her, it was clear that she'd never really been missing at all."
Daryl expected Carol to, perhaps, break down over what she'd said. Instead, she seemed almost relieved by having said it. She seemed a little lighter. Seeing, too, looks of sympathy instead of judgement on the faces of those listening, she continued.
"I adopted two little girls," Carol said. "Mika and Lizzie. Their parents died and, when their father died—last—he asked me to raise them as my own. I'd rather not have to say the details but…they didn't make it. This world just…it was too hard for them."
"It's too hard for a lot of people," Alice said softly. It sounded to Daryl like one of those impulse things that people say when they feel like they have to say something. It was an empty statement, really. Everyone knew that this world was too hard for most people. That knowledge was what made you look, sometimes, at those who survived and ask yourself what it was about them that made them able to withstand more than most people ever could.
Still, Daryl recognized that the empty statement was an attempt to offer comfort when Alice clearly didn't know what else to say, and he could see, from Carol's expression, that she recognized it as such as well.
Daryl found Carol's hand. He held it. On the other side of her, Lydia leaned and rested her head against Carol's shoulder. Carol leaned her head against Lydia's and rubbed at her affectionately with her face. Daryl eased closer to her, rested his arm around her, and leaned against her from his direction, sandwiching her in the comfort and affection of her somewhat newly-official family. She took a deep breath, and Daryl could hear a faint raggedness to the inhalation. He squeezed her hand as a reminder that he was there and, also, that this was her story to tell. She decided what to say, and what she'd rather keep to herself. Her audience, though everyone was intently watching her with furrowed brows, wasn't pushing her to say more.
Carol was the one that chose to go on.
"I adopted a son. Henry. He grew up to be…a young man. Almost a man. He was…murdered. Recently. I guess it feels like it was more recent than it actually was, but…"
"It's one of the reasons we decided to come to Wyomin'," Daryl interjected, sensing that Carol was actually becoming exhausted by her own truth and needed him to help shoulder some of the burden. "We needed some distance between ourselves and…everything we left behind."
"We all did," Lydia said softly.
Almost imperceptibly, Carol jumped. Daryl felt the slightest movement in her muscles. Then, she leaned to clearly see Lydia's face, and she smiled at the girl. Lydia mirrored the smile with a soft one of her own.
"We adopted Lydia," Carol said. "We didn't tell you that she wasn't our biological daughter, because…well…that doesn't matter to us."
"Don't know if it matters to you," Daryl offered.
Lydia's smile had grown at the public declaration of her adoption and the fact that her non-biological state didn't matter to Carol or Daryl.
"We think of Beau as our son," Melodye offered.
"We think of family as what the hell you want it to be," Alice said abruptly. "My own biological family wasn't too impressive, really. It's better just to pick out what you want. What really works for you."
"Muh's my grandma," Beau offered, matter-of-factly as he helped himself to another hunk of meat in a breakfast that had nearly been forgotten as their story closed out the simple meal.
"You're lucky," Lydia responded to him with a little smile that Daryl didn't miss. "Not everyone has a grandma."
"She could be your grandma, too," Beau said.
Muh, who had taken the break in conversation as an opportunity to pack her pipe with the tobacco mix that she preferred, lit the pipe and took several hard puffs on it that practically seemed to turn her face inside out for a moment. Then, she smiled. It was impossible to tell if she was smiling at the conversation, her enjoyment of the pipe, or simply the seeming joy that surrounded everything for her.
"When you live as long as I have," she said, her speech heavy-ladened with the accent and cadence that Daryl couldn't quite place and marked with a vocabulary and syntax that was, in many ways he'd learned, particular to the old woman and, perhaps, her experiences and education in a world that none of them had even known, "you find happiness in being everyone's grandma. I have never felt overrun with little grands to tend and nuss. I am certain I could make do with one more."
Several people laughed at her delivery, and the smile and wink she offered Lydia, but Lydia simply blushed slightly and looked happy with the abundance of family she seemed to be gathering with the passing of the morning.
"Carol's kind of—felt like a lot of it was her fault," Daryl said. "The losin' and all…especially with the kids. It weren't, but…"
He fell off, looking for his words. He didn't have to look too far or too hard, because Melodye finished the sentiment for him.
"But we always look for someone to blame," Melodye said. "Even if the most convenient person to blame is ourselves, or if, by some happenings in our lives, we learned some lesson that taught us that we were most likely to blame for everything bad and wrong in the world."
Daryl nodded his agreement with Melodye's sentiment. Then, he looked at the old woman who looked back at him with eyes that were, when he studied them, practically golden—a soft brown like dark honey—and blued slightly with visible cataracts.
"Just the same," Daryl said, "I was wonderin' if you had some kinda tea or…whatever it is you make everyone…that kinda takes that burden away."
Carol laughed beside him. He looked at her. Her smile was sincere, though curled more on one side with teasing.
"Go ahead and call it what you really call it," Carol teased. "He wants to know if you can…remove my curse."
"I didn't say that," Daryl protested. "I said you weren't cursed. I said if you thought you were cursed, then maybe she could remove the curse and like…give blessings or something instead."
Daryl's face felt warm, and he might have been embarrassed enough to consider leaving them to finish breakfast, conversation, and everything else on their own, but Carol pulled his face to her and quickly kissed him—right there, in front of everyone, until he no longer cared that he'd felt momentarily embarrassed. Rather than making him feel even more embarrassed, the perfectly-timed kiss made him feel relaxed and happy. He smiled at Carol when it broke, and then he looked back at the old woman who was puffing on her pipe and working her jaws in a particular manner that he'd noticed she had when she was thinking about something.
She stared hard at Daryl for a moment. She held his eyes steadily enough that, if he were the kind of person to become unnerved by such a thing, he wouldn't have been able to maintain the eye contact. Finally, she hummed and nodded.
"There will be blessings," she said. "For your wedding and your life."
"And the curse?" Carol asked with a quick pop of nervous laughter that she tried to pass off.
"There is no curse," Muh said. "But for your peace of mind? I've got something in mind that will remove any curse that there might have been. It'll soothe your mind."
"I can't wait," Carol assured her. Muh looked pleased. For a moment, her lips turned upward in a smile that moved the skin that Daryl could only think of as something like jowls very obviously upward. She returned her pipe to her mouth, wiggled to settle a little more comfortably into her place, and returned to puffing in quiet.
Sadie had followed most of the conversation. Daryl had already learned that she was adept at reading lips, though she sometimes simply got tired and accepted that she would be at least a little excluded from things. From their time together, their new travelling companions had seemed to pick up a decent amount of sign language, and Alice caught Sadie up on things that she missed if they were important. She was, at the moment, catching Sadie up on the exchange about the tea—Daryl recognized, himself, some of the signs being exchanged between the two women. It also helped that Alice, when she signed, always said the words, even if she mouthed them silently or with a quiet whisper, to give Sadie the opportunity to read her lips where her signing skills failed to properly convey her message.
Sadie looked directly at Carol and spoke.
"Oh," she said, drawing the word out. "I had five babies. They weren't babies, but…they were my babies." She smiled, looking away, for a moment, at her own memory. "I was a soccer mom. I drove a big SUV." She pretended to drive a car with an exaggeratedly large steering wheel and laughed at her own antics. "My husband was killed by one of the monsters the first night we saw them on the news. Our neighbor. He went outside to talk to him. He was killed. I lost them one-by-one. After that. Some to the creatures you call Walkers. One to a person who was…very bad. One to a fever. She was sick, and she never got better. Am I cursed?"
"I didn't say you're cursed," Carol said quickly. "And—I'm so sorry for what you lost…but I know it doesn't mean anything."
The declaration of "sorry" had come from everyone, practically whispered, like an obligation as soon as Carol had finished talking about Henry. She knew, as well as anyone, how empty words could sound, but she also knew, as well as anyone, that they were all still helpless and without a better way to express true sorrow for someone else's suffering.
"It means what it means," Sadie said with a shrug. "It means that it's all we can say. But…you said you were cursed. Am I?"
"Of course not," Carol said. "You couldn't help what happened. I'm sure if you could have, you would have."
"Then, neither are you," Sadie said, matter-of-factly. She shrugged again. "You would change things, but you can't. None of us can. I miss my babies. You miss yours. We're not cursed."
Daryl tapped Carol and then waved his hand in Sadie's direction to draw her line of sight to him. He spoke to Carol, but tried to keep his face somewhat turned in Sadie's direction for her benefit. He practiced his few signing skills, determining, at that moment, to brush up on them a bit more.
"I like the way she thinks," Daryl said, feeling like his words were a little halted because he tried to pick things that he could somewhat sign to express what he wanted to say. "She's right. She's a smart woman. You should listen to her."
Sadie grinned and the grin broke into laughter.
"Good!" She said, congratulating him for the few signs he could manage by leaning and patting him on the shoulder. "You should listen to me," she said, directing the words to Carol with a broad smile still hanging on her lips.
Carol smiled warmly back at the woman, and Daryl got the feeling, in the pit of his stomach, that they might very well find something of sincere friendship—even if it was built on something like mutual loss.
"I can agree with that," Alice said. "But—right now? I think we all ought to listen to the sounds of our wheels rolling as we head out to our home. If we're going to get the animals settled and everything at least somewhat organized before nightfall, and throw in a wedding besides, we should probably get going."
"That's the second smartest thing I've heard lately," Daryl teased. The suggestion was enough, though, to get them all moving toward packing camp and setting out for their new homestead.