AN: Here we are, another piece to this one. (This is just a reminder for anyone who missed it from the last chapter, but we have had a time jump/passage of time in this story, so Daryl and Carol have been here for a little while now.)

There is some racist language in passing here (I do try to soften it), but it's in keeping with the times, so I beg forgiveness but provide a trigger warning. It is in reference to Native Americans and past thoughts about them.

I hope you enjoy! If you do enjoy, please don't forget to let me know!

111

The town was growing, and it would continue to grow.

Though Daryl spent relatively little time in towns—as little as possible, really—he had observed many of them, in his lifetime, as they went from little more than muddy roads and pole-buildings covered in hides to booming towns that boasted having everything a man could want on hand—and everything that could bring a man to ruin.

From a distance, and usually from catching wind of things by being in some town struggling to be born that was downwind of an old place he'd once visited, Daryl had also seen the way that some of those towns collapsed, even after it had seemed they might grow into something big.

From Daryl's observations, the things that grew a town were the yellow, the people that came to the town, usually because of the yellow, and the businesses that sprung up like weeds from the ground. In Daryl's experience, those were also the things that had a tendency to see the same town driven to ruin.

The yellow drove some men crazy—the having it and the not having it alike. Some of the businesses that sprung up out of the ground drove some people crazy, too. The drink would get to them, as would the women, regardless—or so Daryl had seen in a few occasions when he happened to be in the wrong place when men lost their minds and went after each other like true savages—of whether or not they had a mate for themselves somewhere. Those men, mad because of one thing or another, could ruin a town.

Every town got rough—it was just a matter of chance, Daryl supposed, whether the rough smoothed out or the town got broken because of it.

Daryl tended to move on right around the time a town got rough. He didn't care for the roughness. There had been, of course, a time or two when he'd stayed in an area long enough to see the roughness go one way or another.

Sweet Springs was starting to show signs of the fraying around the edges that warned its rough days might be coming.

The only thing that brought Daryl comfort about the fact that they wouldn't be moving on—whether Sweet Springs went belly up or made it through its roughness—was the fact that the land they'd settled was far enough away from the town that the town proper wouldn't trickle out so far as to spill over into their land. The only way anyone from the town was making it out there was if they happened to stagger through on their way to building something else, if they were headed looking for the yellow and got somehow away from where they ought to be looking, or if they came out there with intention—and Daryl didn't figure that too many people had business being out there with any intentions.

Daryl stooped in Andrea's little room, one knee to the floor, and looked at the evidence before him that Sweet Springs was getting dreadful close to entering her rough days, if she wasn't there already.

Andrea winced and jerked back, but Daryl held her face steady.

"Look what he done, Daryl," Carol said, her voice cracking slightly.

Daryl wasn't certain if the blonde was more upset about what had been done to her or if Carol was. As soon as Daryl brought Carol into the bar, he'd bought a drink, as he always did, and asked for any paper or any other such rag that might bring news of the world. Yellow passed hands to the owner of the bar—now, really, a proper saloon in a lot of ways—and the man had winked at him, telling him he'd given him enough to visit the whores of his choosing, himself, and to drink all the damn day long if he so pleased.

Daryl told him, as he always did, that all he pleased was that he have the news, a drink to wet his throat now and upon his return from his amblings about the town, and that his brother be well-kept and well-satisfied in his absence.

Daryl had no sooner sent Carol upstairs to find her friend, though, and settled into reading through the paper provided while opening his ears for any stories that might be of greater interest than anything printed on the pages before him, than Carol came back down the stairs looking for him to follow her. He did, already knowing that the man who ran the place—whom he now referred to as "Pete" to cement their so-called relationship—wouldn't protest his trip upstairs because of the amount of yellow that had already changed hands between them.

"Weren't Pete that done it?" Daryl asked. He released Andrea's face.

"No," she said, leaning to pour herself a drink of whiskey from a bottle she had next to her bed. She offered the little glass around, but neither Daryl nor Carol wanted it. Andrea shrugged her shoulders and swallowed down the whole contents of the little glass in one gulp. She winced again, and Daryl honestly didn't know if it was from the heat of the whiskey, the cut on her lip that seemed determined to keep tearing open, or the bruising on her throat that made her voice a good deal raspier than it usually was. "Weren't Pete. Was Pete that run him outta here."

"He shoot him?" Daryl asked.

Andrea hummed and shook her head.

"Sweet Springs is a civilized kinda town, Daryl," Andrea said. "They don't like you shootin' people."

"They like men beatin' on women? Looks like he coulda killed you," Daryl said.

"He could have," Andrea said, "but he didn't. And they don't hang men for that. Besides—beatin' on whores is different than beatin' on respectable women."

"Daryl…" Carol said.

She didn't say anything else. Just his name came out a bit strangled, and she wrang her hands so that he figured he could just about know what she was thinking without the words.

Ed had hurt her pretty bad, and Daryl knew it. She was remembering the way he'd hurt her, looking at what someone had done to her friend, just the same way that smoke, smelling as it did sometimes of flesh and char, could take Daryl right back to the hurt and fear he'd felt so very long ago when he'd last heard his real brother tell him to run.

"Animal," Daryl growled through his teeth, Carol's pain at the memory of her own experiences crawling up his backbone like some kind of invisible snake.

"What?" Andrea asked, swallowing down another drink of the whiskey.

Daryl stood up, straightening his back and his knees.

"Animal!" He said, more loudly than he meant to. Both women jumped, and Daryl immediately brought his thumb to his mouth to search out something good for chewing on. He started to calm when he found a piece of hard skin and worked it with his teeth for a second. "Animal—that's what done this to you. Worse than an animal. Animals don't hurt 'less they got some reason to do so. Animals don't hit and hurt just for sport. Savage."

"He weren't no savage," Andrea said. "White as me—didn't even look like he was half as brown as the trappers that come through after having spent half the year ass deep in a river somewhere."

"They call me savage," Daryl said. "Call them trappers savage. Men like me. Call the Indians savage. But it's the animals like him that's the real savages."

"You won't hear me disagree," Andrea said.

Daryl calmed. He felt disgusted. He felt angry. He felt frustrated.

He was mad for every person—whether child like he had been or woman like the two in front of him—who had been beaten just for being unable to defend themselves against some kind of cruel savage like the ones who would hurt them just to see them hurt.

But there was little he could do about the situation.

"He weren't shot an' nobody didn't string him up," Daryl said.

"Mmm mmm," Andrea said, shaking her head. She laughed quietly and lit a cigarette before standing up and walking around her room. Daryl recognized her movements as the kind of back and forth shuffling necessary for not feeling just the way he was currently feeling. Carol was clearly feeling the same way, because she started her own kind of shuffling from foot to foot.

"Sweet Springs got law of some sort?" Daryl asked.

"There's a man they're callin' a sheriff," Andrea said. "Got a deputy, or so he says. Skinny little cuss. Comes in here for a drink and a poke, regular. Strange sort. Likes for me to call him names and such. But he pays good. Always leaves me a little something that's for me, you know? Separate from what he pays Pete."

"I don't put much in the law," Daryl said. "Sometimes they're as bad as the rest of people. He hurt you?"

"Which one?" Daryl asked.

"Both of 'em," Daryl said. "I'm askin' if the law is doin' this kinda thing, too. Hurtin' you when they was payin' to mate you an' nothin' else."

"Not to me," Andrea said. "Sheriff—he's got a wife, so he says. He's only come to me a couple times. Dull type. Fat. Smells like smoked meat. Don't say much—you know? Comes in, does what he wants, leaves. He don't leave nothin' extra for me. It's the deputy that likes for me to say things to him." She laughed. "They're things I wouldn't think would get a rise out of him, if you know what I mean, but…you learn there's all kinds in this business. He don't hurt me, though. If anything, I'm hurtin' him, but only because he wants it to be so. Pays extra and all. But—I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"It don't matter to me how you mate," Daryl offered. "Long as—he don't think he can do you like this. Pete tell the law what this animal done to you?"

"Doesn't matter," Andrea said. She shook her head. "He threw him out. But it was just as much for damagin' his property as it was for what he done. Pete don't care if I get my face busted up because it hurts me. He cares if I get my face busted up because it hurts him. People don't pay as much for a busted-up whore."

Daryl regarded her. He let his eyes drift over to Carol. His chest ached to see her frown. Andrea was her friend—possibly the only one she'd ever had and, maybe, ever would have—even if her time had to be bought.

"You know his name? Remember what he looked like?" Daryl asked.

Andrea shook her head.

"Didn't give me a name," she said. "Most don't. He was a drifter. Kind that looked like he hadn't found the barber's place in months."

Daryl laughed to himself. He knew things that Andrea had said about him—opinions she'd had when they'd first come to know each other. The passing time had changed things for all of them, though, and they'd come to know more about themselves and each other.

"Like he was part griz?" Daryl asked.

Andrea smiled and her face colored, the contrast looked almost sickening against the multi-colored bruises.

"He's gone on," Andrea said. "I'ma be fine."

Daryl nodded his understanding.

"Look out for her," Daryl said, gesturing toward Carol. "Best you can. I got things to do, but…I'll see if I can't bring you some salve for your face. Make it not hurt so much. Heal it—what can be done, at least."

"Don't you go through no trouble," Andrea protested.

Daryl glanced at Carol again. She was practically itching, he could tell, to get her hands on Andrea. She'd clean the wounds better than the woman had—better, even, than anything like a doctor they might have in town could've done.

"Ain't no trouble," Daryl said. He reached an arm out to Carol. She came to him, hugged him tightly—her sorrow over her friend's suffering and, maybe, some touch of memory from her own life coming through in her tight squeeze. Daryl kissed her face. "Be careful. Don't'cha leave this room. Neither one of you."

Carol hummed and nodded her agreement, kissing Daryl and whispering her love to him in such a way that a shiver ran through his body.

"Love you, too," he breathed out, enjoying the words—enjoying having someone to say them to, someone for whom he really meant them.

He tipped his head to Andrea and left. On his way out, downstairs, before heading toward the store to buy his supplies, Daryl passed a handful more of the rocks to Pete. The rocks, after all, didn't mean anything—but the whore? Well, to Carol, if to nobody else in the world, she meant something.

"That oughta pay to keep her off her back a couple days," Daryl said. "Let her heal up."

Pete's eyes said it was plenty for just such a thing. He pocketed the money and poured Daryl another drink.

"I was sorry he done it to her," Pete said. "Weren't nothin' I could do. By the time we knowed there was trouble…"

"Yeah," Daryl said, sipping the whiskey. "You run him out?"

"Best I could," Pete said. "He won't come back no more."

Daryl looked around. Every man in the place looked almost just like the other. Half of them were so covered over with dirt, mud, and every other filth known to man, that they hardly had more than eyes that could be clearly seen. Most of them, as Andrea said, hadn't seen a barber—the few who had looked like pink-faced dandies of the sort that wore stove-pipe hats. Of the ones that Andrea might've identified as "grizzlies," Daryl could hardly tell a single one of them from his own reflection in the glass of the windows.

"Don't reckon you'd know if he do or he don't," Daryl said, sorry for the way it made his gut feel. "Just—keep her off her back a couple days? Hear? Unless it's my brother frequentin' her, and I'll…you know…bring him in if it is."

Pete patted his pocket and laughed.

"I hear you, partner," he said. "Another whiskey?"

"When I come back for my brother," Daryl said. "Don't you let 'em outta that room—neither one."