AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Getting everyone to rearrange their schedules for an impromptu post-lunch-rush-late-lunch at the café wasn't really as difficult as Carol might have imagined it would be when she'd suggested it through a group text to the Glory Gals. Alice's schedule was, as a general rule, the least flexible, but she was off for the day and that opened up a lot more possibility than usual. They decided to meet when her new companion—Sadie—was done teaching her morning classes at the university and had a chunk of time before her later classes began. She needed to eat, after all, and it made it easy to get everyone to agree on a specific window around which to organize their gathering.

Carol hadn't really come up with any truly fancy way to tell her friends her news. In a back corner table, where they would be less likely to draw too much attention, but where they could still keep an eye on the handful of people who lingered over coffee, some food, and work or a book, at this slightly off-hour of business, Carol had simply come straight out with an unadorned "I'm pregnant" and waited for reactions even as she enjoyed the taste of those words on her tongue. She relished the words, but she realized they were words that her friends—with no reason to expect they were coming—would need a moment to digest.

It didn't matter. Carol knew that. Just saying those words—just the sound of them—made her heart beat faster and harder in her chest. They were beautiful words. Happy words. They made her stomach feel full of butterflies and, in the very little time since she'd known of Sprout's existence, she'd found that she simply loved saying them. They came to her out of nowhere. They bubbled up inside her and she caught them before they left her lips at the strangest times. She indulged herself and let them go when she was at home.

"I'm pregnant," she would say, awe-struck, as she brushed her teeth. Daryl would smile at her, immediately.

"You damn sure are," he'd confirm around a mouthful of toothpaste.

"I'm pregnant," she would catch herself blurting out as she made breakfast. Daryl, bringing her the eggs to scramble, would nuzzle her neck and leave a few kisses there that made her shiver in the best way.

"You are that," he'd confirm.

Sometimes her brain changed it up. The words might change, but the feeling in her body didn't. The tears that prickled at her eyes didn't change.

"We're having a baby," she'd whisper to Daryl as he found his place in the bed beside her for actual sleep—stretching like a cat before settling down with a sigh.

He'd sigh again, and she could hear the contentment in the sound.

"Yeah," he'd say, his hand resting warm over her stomach and giving it either a little pat or a gentle rub, "we are."

Daryl didn't make Carol explain why it was that she sometimes felt utterly unable to keep from bursting out with the words that didn't need to be said, a dozen or more times a day, in the past day or two. It was information, after all, that they shared. Carol was glad that he didn't ask for an explanation, because she doubted that she could explain it. She didn't understand it herself. It just seemed to fill her up sometimes and it had to come out—it just came out.

But Daryl didn't mind. He met each reminder of what they were doing together with love.

And he'd told her to ignore anyone's negativity.

Andrea already knew Carol's news, and she sat there with a small smile on her face—evidence that she was trying to hold it back—as she watched back and forth among the others to see their reactions.

Jacqui was the first to realize what Carol said. In Jacqui's normal way of simply being Jacqui, she responded. She stood up from her spot at the table, walked over behind Carol's chair and, before Carol could turn around to offer her body a little more openly, Jacqui hugged her from behind. Carol closed her eyes and relished the comfortable feeling of Jacqui's squeeze—just hard enough to say she was sincere, but not too hard—and the feeling of her cheek brushing against Carol's.

"Congratulations, Sweetie," she said. That was it. She straightened up, patted Carol's shoulder once more, and returned to her seat with a smile on her face. Jacqui wouldn't say much more—that wasn't Jacqui's way. Instead, she'd slowly start to draw discussion out of Carol in the morning while they both crowded into the kitchen to prepare everything for the morning rush. She'd drop little comments throughout the day—what cookies should they bake to celebrate? Should they have a little baby special or something regularly to let the customers know?

Jacqui wouldn't make a big deal right away and all at once. Instead, Jacqui would make her congratulations a steady trickle of reminders as they worked.

Alice was the second who seemed to catch on. She looked up from her phone, where she'd been distracted with something, and she'd followed Jacqui's trip over to hug Carol and her trip back to her seat. She looked from Jacqui, to Andrea, to Carol. She looked at Sadie for guidance, but Sadie had likely missed everything entirely because Carol hadn't actually gotten her attention when she'd made her announcement and, now, she realized that even if she'd been looking at the cookie on her plate or her coffee, she might have missed the whole thing.

Alice bumped Sadie's arm.

"Did you hear her?" Alice asked.

Sadie didn't hear Carol's laugh at the expression she very openly gave Alice for the question—and for Alice's muttered apology and declaration that "she knew what she meant."

They both looked at Carol.

"I'm pregnant," she repeated, looking directly at Sadie before she flicked her eyes in Alice's direction.

Alice's eyes went big and she dropped her phone on the table before she came around the table to hug Carol from behind. Her hug was rougher than Jacqui's. It rocked Carol from side-to-side and the noise that Alice made in her ear was much harsher than Jacqui's nearly whispered declaration of congratulations.

Carol thanked Alice and thanked Sadie, too, for her warm offer of congratulations across the table. Immediately following her congratulations, Sadie informed Carol that she loved babies—something she'd already pointed out to Andrea—and she asked if she and Alice might be allowed to babysit.

The idea of letting someone babysit the baby was so foreign to Carol that she couldn't possibly wrap her head around it at the moment. The idea that the baby would really be there someday—a free and independent entity—was still far too foreign for Carol to fully digest at the moment. Still, she didn't want to disappoint Sadie or quell her obvious enthusiasm at all, so she quickly agreed that it was absolutely something that could happen—Carol and Daryl would count on Sadie and Alice to babysit.

And, though she couldn't imagine that at all in the moment, a warm feeling in Carol's body told her that it was true.

Michonne shook her head when they all looked at her and stirred her coffee with a partially eaten coffee.

"Don't you even look at me like that," she said. "Congratulations—and that's all I'm going to say. So—don't you even look at me like that."

"Like what, Mich?" Andrea asked.

"Like that," Michonne said around the soggy bite of cookie. She pointed at Andrea with her pinky finder while her other fingers held the cookie. "You've been giving me horrible looks—you've all been giving me horrible looks since—since you think I slighted Andrea in some way."

"You told me my baby is the worst mistake of my life," Andrea said with a put-on shrug. "But I can't imagine why anyone would think that's a slight."

"I didn't say that," Michonne said. "I didn't. I said this—this having a baby—this whole situation…I said this could turn out to be the biggest mistake of your life. I didn't say it was. Look—you met a man at a bar. At Salty's, nonetheless. You went home with him. Then you're living with him before anyone can turn around. You're married and you're pregnant—practically all at the same time. Ty works with Merle, Andrea. He knows him. He told me he's a rough around the edges kind of guy. He's been unattached his whole life. You don't think this is fast? Who can say that he won't decide to just—pack up and move on? Decide he preferred his freedom?"

"Shane was better?" Andrea asked. "Just because he was a police officer, doesn't mean he was really an outstanding citizen."

"You know I didn't care for Shane," Michonne said.

"Nobody did," Alice said. It was the first input from anyone else. Nobody wanted to interrupt the two women too much now that Michonne was actually explaining herself rather than simply tossing unexplained opinions in Andrea's direction.

"I'm just saying that Merle? This might not have been a great idea."

Andrea nodded her head. She laughed to herself, but Carol heard the quality of the laughter. It wasn't sincere.

"Merle is—absolutely rough around the edges," Andrea said. "And he's—ten years older than me."

"That's another thing," Michonne said. "A baby? At his age? You're playing with whether or not he even gets to see his kid grow up."

"Either he's trying to see his kid grow up or he's flying the coop to get his freedom to pick up other women at Salty's," Jacqui said. "But we've got to decide what he's guilty of because there's no way he's dedicated to both." Everyone laughed at Jacqui's assessment of the situation. It was good laughter—the kind that relieved some of the tension. "Mich—Sweetie," Jacqui continued whenever the laughter had naturally passed, "you gotta let people make their mistakes, if that's what they're going to do."

"Wow," Andrea said. "Wow—so the general consensus, and the only fucking thing we can agree on here is that—this is all a mistake?"

"That wasn't what I meant at all," Jacqui said, reaching over and patting Andrea's hand. "I meant that to Michonne. And what I meant was—if it is a mistake, it's yours to make. And it's nobody else's business."

"I get it, Mich," Andrea said. "I—get it. Everything you've said? I've thought about it. I met Merle at Salty's, and it was absolutely clear that it wasn't his first rodeo. And—we've moved fast. Faster than I'm comfortable with, at times, but…I guess it just happened. And he is rough around the edges. And he's got—he's got a streak of something. But I give him an outlet for that. When he needs to get it out, I give him an outlet. One we both agree on."

"And when that's not enough?"

"Hell—I'll deal with it then, I guess," Andrea said. "I was never enough for Shane. At least the time when I'm not enough for Merle is still hypothetical. Look—Merle does have that side. Ty knows it because Merle's not ashamed to share it. He's not secretive about it. But he's got another side, too. And it's a wonderful side, Mich. It's—appreciative. And calm. And just plain easy. Don't look at me like that. When I did something for Shane? He treated everything like he was waiting to see what else I had to offer. Anything I do for Merle—anything? He doesn't even have to say a thing, but I can see it in his eyes that it's…everything…is like the greatest kindness that he can imagine. And when he doesn't have something that he needs to get out of his system? When he's just…OK? He's really pretty calm and even-keeled. He's just—satisfied."

"That's fine," Michonne said. "But are you satisfied?"

Andrea laughed to herself.

"I always wanted the whole thing, you know? A husband. A baby. Merle—he wants to start a little garden in the spring, Mich, because he read that baby food has all these bad ingredients in it, and he thinks our baby ought to eat things he knows are all right for at least a little while." Andrea shrugged her shoulders and covered her face. Carol didn't have to wonder why, so she simply scooted her chair closer to her and rubbed her back. "I'm more than satisfied. I'm happy," Andrea said. "And I just—want to be allowed to be…happy."

Michonne was out of her seat quickly and Carol moved to allow her space to wedge her body between Carol and Andrea's. Andrea didn't fight the hug, and she accepted the apology by burying her face for a moment in the crook of Michonne's neck.

"I never meant that I didn't want you to be happy," Michonne said. "Just—that I wanted you to be happy. I didn't want anyone to mess that up for you."

"Then you stop messing with it, asshole," Andrea said.

Everyone laughed and, across the table, Carol caught Alice explaining to Sadie, without the need to speak with her voice much more than a very hushed exhalation of breath, what had happened.

When Michonne broke from the hug with Andrea and had used a couple of napkins snagged from the table to wipe at her face as surely as if she were one of Michonne's own daughters, Andrea frowned at her.

"And now we've ruined Carol's announcement. This was supposed to be her thing."

"You didn't ruin anything," Carol said. "You couldn't. And—I said what I had to say."

Michonne turned her body and pulled Carol into an awkward hug, thanks to the angle caused by their positions.

"I'm happy for you," Michonne said. "Both of you. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to have my reservations."

Carol laughed to herself.

"I have reservations almost every day," Carol offered. "And then I put them aside just in time to come up with some more."

"How long do you think yours'll last, Mich?" Andrea asked.

Michonne sighed.

"Five or ten years, at least," she said with a laugh. "But—I'll try to do better. I promise."