AN: Here we are, another piece to this one!

I hope you enjoy! If you do, please do let me know!

111

"I bought a jar of pickles at the store," Daryl said, as he came in the door. "You know that even if you tell 'em you want extra, they don't never do the sandwiches right, and you didn't have any when I brought sandwiches the last time."

Carol had held the door open for him to pass inside. He almost never came to her trailer empty-handed. Tonight, he'd asked for her sub sandwich order, and he'd brought drinks and, from the looks of the bag, something else.

"What is all this?" Carol asked.

"Sandwiches," he said, "and I got you a whole number 19, 'cause you can take the other part to lunch, or you can eat it all tonight, so it won't go to waste. And then there's the pickles and a couple sodas, and I got some chips, because it's cheaper to just buy the sandwiches and, then, just get everything else from the store. And I got cheesecake."

"Cheesecake?" Carol asked.

"You like cheesecake," Daryl said, matter-of-factly.

"You didn't have to bring all of this," Carol said.

"You're makin' our baby," Daryl said, "least damn thing I could do was feed you decent. Gotta keep your strength up to make the baby. Buildin' all the little parts and shit's gotta take a lot of calories."

Carol felt her throat tighten. She forced herself to swallow against the ache.

"There's no baby yet," Carol said. She heard her voice make a bit of a strained sound. She didn't have to wonder if Daryl heard it. She saw him tense as he straightened up from putting the sandwiches and the pickles into the refrigerator to keep them cool until after they'd done what he'd come there for them to do.

This wasn't the first time they'd done this, after all.

Carol saw when Daryl relaxed—either because he sensed there was no reason to be tense, or because he willed himself to relax.

"No," he said, turning around and grabbing an ashtray from the cabinet that he'd brought over to the trailer some time before. "No—there ain't, but…we gonna put one in there tonight. I feel sure of it."

Carol laughed to herself.

"You've said that before, Daryl," Carol said. "A couple of times."

"And I been wrong my fair share of times in my life," Daryl said. He lit a cigarette and he faced her. She could see tension on his features. Maybe it wasn't tension. Maybe it was something else—sadness.

She felt sadness. She felt an intense sadness. It had been building in her body for a while, but it was rapidly rising up since she'd seen the ovulation test confirm that the time had come to try again for a baby.

She swallowed against the profound sadness.

"What if you're wrong this time?" She asked. "Again," she added. "And—there's no baby."

"We ain't even tried yet," Daryl said. "You already think there won't be one? We ain't even tried. And—I've got some new ideas."

Carol laughed quietly at the words. Daryl was teasing, she was sure of that, but there was some element of truth behind the teasing.

"There's not that much new to come up with, Daryl," Carol said. "At the risk of sounding like Merle—it's pretty straightforward. You just—put it in there, and I either make us a baby or I don't. And so far…"

"Don't."

Daryl said it quickly, and he said it a touch loudly. He said it with enough force that Carol knew that he meant it, and he wanted her to know that he meant it. Still, she didn't feel afraid of him.

Carol felt nothing but safe and secure in Daryl's presence—a feeling that was still so new to her, despite the fact that they'd been "practicing" to make a baby for months now.

"This is the fourth time, Daryl," Carol said.

"Fourth time's a charm," Daryl said.

"That's the third time," Carol said. "And you said it then, too."

"And?" Daryl challenged. "All that meant was—third time's like…the one leadin' up to the charm."

Carol laughed, again, in spite of herself.

"What if it isn't?" She asked.

"Five's a good number," Daryl said.

"And then?" She asked.

"Six is like three twice," Daryl said. "And that's twice as good…and, hell, I've always really liked the number seven, even though I don't know fuckin' why. Just feels like a good number to me."

"When does it stop?" Carol asked.

"I guess—when the baby's here," Daryl said.

"What if there isn't ever a baby, Daryl?" Carol asked. "I think we have to start talking about the very real possibility that—I can't do this. I can't give you a baby."

"I got some new ideas for this time," Daryl said.

"If I can't give you a baby, Daryl, then I can't hold up my end of the bargain," Carol said. "The contract is null and void, and you can go with someone else."

"I was readin' that—it might be the position," Daryl said. "Some people swear that you get pregnant if it we go at it different. Said—we just change up the position, and that oughta do the trick. It gets everything in there better, or whatever."

"You ought to start looking for someone else," Carol said. "I won't be offended. I understand, you know? It's business, and…you want this baby."

"You want it, too," Daryl said.

"If I can't get pregnant," Carol said, but she didn't get to fully finish out her thought before Daryl interrupted her.

"Merle and Andrea are damn near professionals at fucking," Daryl said. "They do it like hundreds of thousand of times more'n we do. More'n we have. And it ain't worked for them, yet, neither. Andrea said it's because you have to warm up. Like—the whole…connection thing. It's gotta warm up. Her body's gotta warm up to the fact that they're trying to have a baby, when they weren't before, and yours is gotta warm up to me."

"People get pregnant on accident, Daryl," Carol said. "The first time they have sex—the only time. It's not like a carbureted engine in the winter. It doesn't have to warm up."

"Yeah, but you took birth control when you were with him. Told your body you didn't wanna make no babies. That's what you said. You snuck around and you took it, because he didn't want you on it, because only whores was on the pill, but he didn't want you gettin' knocked up. Ain't that what you said? That you took the pill while you was with him?"

Carol could tell that Daryl was getting fired up. His cheeks had run pink. There was a palpable something in the air between them. It was an electricity of sorts, but not the kind that she'd come to expect from Daryl's visits. There was something there that hadn't been there before. It felt like it pricked something in Carol's chest. She held herself back from her own interpretation, because believing herself would have meant daring to believe something that, honestly, she didn't dare.

She didn't dare to give herself that hope that, really, she wasn't even prepared to admit was a very deep-seated hope that she held hidden inside her.

Daryl Dixon sounded like a desperate man. And the feeling she felt, in the air around her, had the heavy, damp-blanket feeling of desperation.

But she wouldn't entertain that—not too much.

Still, she did remind herself that desperate people could be dangerous. Desperate people were closer to their instincts, perhaps, than they were without that emotion turning off some of the switches that normally kept them operating a bit more predictably.

Carol crossed her arms across her chest. She didn't want to push him too hard, too fast.

"I took the pill," she said.

For a moment, silence fell between them. It was a silence they both needed. Quietly, they both seemed to reset. Carol saw Daryl unclench his jaw. She felt her own body relax a little in the moment of quiet.

Daryl drew in a deep, final drag on the cigarette that he'd been smoking, and he snubbed the butt out in the ashtray, before he exhaled the smoke.

"You quit takin' the pill to make our baby," he said.

Carol laughed at the thought.

"It's kind of a necessary step," she said.

"Andrea quit takin' the pill to make a baby for her an' Merle," Daryl said, somewhat calmly. "And she said that—that it's one of them things. Goes with the warmin' up. She said it's like your body's gotta cleanse it out or somethin'. Like it's…it's gotta let go of all the pill's puttin' in there to make it safe for the baby. It can take a bit."

"Some women get pregnant on the pill, Daryl," Carol said. "Some women take antibiotics, and they get pregnant because it cancels the pill or…or something."

Daryl looked at her and frowned sincerely. It made her chest ache.

"I just—want you to have what you want," Carol said.

"That's what the hell I want," Daryl said. "For both of us."

"If you want to start looking for someone else, Daryl, I understand," Carol said.

"Yeah—well—I don't, so…there's that," Daryl said. "I've got patience, Carol. I waited this damn long. I've waited—I've waited my whole damn life for this…"

"And that's why I feel like you shouldn't have to keep waiting," Carol said. "It's been almost four months."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Four months ain't no time," he said. "Andrea told me 'fore we even started this that she looked it up and it said that it takes six months to a year, Carol. Six months to a whole year. And that's just a quick search on your phone. You can look it up right now. So—I was ready to wait that long without…without even thinkin' about it."

"You wanted a baby right away," Carol said.

"Would I have liked that? Absolutely! Who the hell doesn't want instant gratification? Hell—I burn my mouth nine times outta ten on my pizza, because I can't sit and wait for it to cool down. But I'm willin' to wait for good things, Carol, and I'm willin' to wait for this."

"And if it doesn't work?" Carol asked. "Daryl—at some point, we have to talk about that. We have to talk about…what happens if it doesn't work, and I can't hold up my end of the contract. That's just part of it. We have to discuss…what happens."

Daryl was clearly thinking. Carol could see the muscle in his jaw twitch, every now and again, but she felt like she could practically hear the gears turning in his mind.

Her throat ached, and her chest ached. There had been almost four months of knowing Daryl. There had been almost four months of "practicing" to make a baby, coming together for marathon sex when the ovulation tests said she was ovulating, and feeling a practical sucking hole in her chest when her period came.

She felt like she knew him far better than she should after only four months. She felt like a piece of her, somehow, had known him forever.

She couldn't imagine, if she were honest, a life where she no longer knew him.

But this was business, and Daryl wanted a child desperately. More than that, he deserved a baby. He deserved everything, and Carol truly believed that, but he deserved the baby he wanted more than anyone had ever deserved a child.

And as much as she didn't want to walk away from this—whatever the hell it was, even if it was truly just a business transaction—she wanted him to have that baby, somehow.

"Twelve months," Daryl said. Carol's heart skipped a beat. Had she heard his voice crack? Was it truly as strained as it sounded?

"What?" She asked.

He held a hand up in her direction. He cleared his throat, somewhat discreetly, like he didn't want her to really notice that's what he was doing. He coughed into his hand to cover it up.

"Twelve months," he said. "Give it twelve months, Carol, of us doin' what we're doin'. Give it a good twelve months. And, then, if there still ain't no baby…"

"You'll find someone else?" Carol asked, forcing herself not to acknowledge how those words made her heart feel.

"We'll talk about what we do," Daryl said. "In twelve months, we'll talk about it. Until then—part of the contract was you would do what was good for the baby, and this stressin' about whether or not there's gonna be a baby is just makin' it harder on the baby to take. That's all it's doing. It's makin' it harder…and that's against the contract…so…there ought not to be no more of that."

Carol drew in a breath and let it out. There was a finality to his statement, but there was something else—a yearning or a need.

She refused to put that on him. It was, after all, probably a projection of her own overactive emotions.

"Well?" He asked, now making it sound like he'd been proposing something, instead of demanding it.

"Twelve months," Carol said, nodding her acceptance.

"This ain't but four," Daryl said. He visibly relaxed. A hint of a smile came to his lips. Carol realized that his expression—and his relaxation—made her feel more content than she'd felt all day. "Barely a drop in the bucket. And I got a good feelin' about this one, Carol. A real good feelin' about it. Call it a hunch or whatever."

Carol laughed quietly to herself. He'd said something like that each time before, but it was no less endearing, now, than it had been the first time she'd heard it.

"Tell me about these—new ideas you've got, Daryl," Carol said, reaching a hand out to catch his and pull him toward her.