More Carl x bambi pls?
In Their Shadows (13)
tw: canon typical violence, implied teen pregnancy, discussion of teen pregnancy, non-graphic mentions of SA, mentions of child loss, mentions of loss, being misgendered, vague-ish recounting of SA
Daryl gently shakes your shoulder, hovering close above your face with his hair dangling and dropping wet spots onto the sheets. One hits your cheek and you frown, trying to turn away and fall back asleep, but he shakes you again.
“C'mon, Bea. It's important,” He grumbles quietly.
You frown at that, yawning and deciding to blink yourself awake for his sake despite the barn being so dark you can hardly see what's a few feet in front of you.
Your body feels sluggish. The mattress is warm and gentle on the aches throughout your body. You don't want to move. There should be no reason to, with Hilltop –an early rising farming settlement– as quiet as it is. The only sound you can make sense of is the rain and his voice.
It feels safe.
You lean into his hand on your shoulder and start to drift again, lightly growling in protest, a pout on your lips when he lifts your head to keep you awake.
“Carol needs somethin’, so I'm goin’ out with her to get it, ‘kay?” The man says louder, brow furrowed tensely.
“Mhm,” You hum through another yawn, rubbing at your eyes.
“It’s…” He swallows. “It's gonna take a few hours, so Rick agreed to watch you.”
You nod, already slipping back into unconsciousness. “M'kay…”
Daryl sighs and bundles you up with blankets, hoping to keep you as dry and warm as possible throughout the process. You're already sick, he doesn't want you getting any worse. He slips his arms underneath your legs and back, hands curling around your limbs as he lifts you up.
Immediately he feels something in his chest pull looking down at your face. For a second he could have sworn he saw someone else in your place, her light blonde hair spilling out from her ponytail, a grin on her face, as he lugged her around suppressing a smile. Then again, he carried her, with his eyes locked on the hole going clean through her forehead, eyes lifeless and her pale skin, ice cold.
Daryl mindlessly presses a hand to your cheek to remind himself that you're still warm. Still alive.
He turns with you in his arms, just in time to see the lightning strike behind Carol where she’s holding the barn doors open. The sky lights up a glowing blue-ish grey, illuminating the whole room and shadowing out her face. –Her hair is wet too, from the time they spent retrieving all of the weapons they’re going to need for their excursion.
When Daryl gently moves past her with you in his arms, head covered by sheets, she steps aside and lowers her eyes.
She doesn’t follow him to Rick’s.
She hasn’t been able to look him in the eye and lie properly since they were back at the prison, when she killed then burned Karen and David to prevent the spread of the mysterious disease working its way through them. Not to say that she’d hold back either. The woman would probably wind up getting into an argument and splitting off from the group again if it came down to it.
This isn’t her business. She cut ties with everyone here a long time ago to stop the inevitable. Watching on, helpless as the people she loves drop like flies around her despite being stronger than she ever has been.
Or so she thought.
Because even knowing that, she’s still here fighting.
Rick is waiting on the porch when you both arrive, hand waving for the other man to walk faster and get inside the house. Daryl jogs up to it and he shuts the door behind him, breathing softly at the warmth the structure provides.
“It’s cold out there, huh?” Rick laughs softly, turning to walk to the halfway functional kitchen. “Want some coffee? I’d just made a pot when I saw you walkin’ up to the house. –It'd be good to get somethin’ warm in your belly ‘fore you go out there.”
Daryl swallows a lump in the back of his throat. “No.”
“Are you sure? We’ve got some instant oatmeal too, and it cooks… well, instantly, so–”
“I’ve got to go,” Daryl says weakly, shaking his head. “Where should I put ‘er?”
Rick stops midstep, turning to look at the other man with concern. “On the… couch is fine for now…”
Daryl walks over to the sofa and lays you down gently, pulling one of the pillows down so your neck isn’t at an awkward angle. The outer layer of sheets he wrapped you in are soaked, so he pulls them off and tosses them onto the floor in a pile, tucking you in with what’s left.
“Love you, Bea,” He hums quietly, kissing the top of your head and slowly pulling back from you. He turns to Rick. “We’ll catch up later, okay? I gotta go, man.”
“Yeah…” He starts to reply, but Daryl is already out the door before he can finish his sentence.
Rick turns towards the kitchen to grab himself a cup, but shakes his head and spins back around to follow the other man out the door.
“Daryl!” He calls from the porch, seeing him only a few houses away.
The man turns back to look at him, dark hair sticking to his forehead while water seeps into his clothes. He doesn't look in the mood to talk. He certainly can't want to be lectured with how exhausted he's been. Rick should just be glad he's sober today.
“Be careful.”
Daryl nods, eyes lowering as he turns his back and walks away slowly.
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You shiver and pull the sheets closer to yourself with closed eyes, flexing against the stiff material you're laying on. –It's nothing like the squishy, worn out mattress in the barn. It doesn’t smell like Daryl either. It smells like wood and oil, old repurposed fabric, and the hands of the person who put it together.
Squinting, you sit up and pull the sheets with you, looking around the room until it comes back to you.
Rick is standing at the edge of the kitchen with his head cocked, mug in hand. You think you can remember him looking at you like this a few times before, wondering if you were actually awake this time or just confused about where you were again.
“Hungry?” He asks, brow furrowed.
You shake your head, signing, Stomach hurts.
“Hmm,” He hums in acknowledgement, frowning blankly at you as if deep in thought. He sets his mug down, eyes going to your stomach and staying there for a long time.
For a man that lives with two children that look exactly like his late wife, he does a good job of not looking haunted.
His face remains blank, but not unkind as he says, “...If you wanted to, Carl’s room is down the hall. You could wake him up.”
The look of pure disbelief and uncertainty you give him is more than enough to tell him that he’s made the right choice.
Rick can’t help huffing out a laugh, giving you a reassuring smile as he nods in the direction of Carl’s room.
You try not to seem too eager when you stand up from the couch and start padding down the hall to his room with the sheets you’d been wrapped in dragging behind you, shooting Rick nervous glances all the while like he’s going to revoke his permission. He doesn’t, just keeps smiling and nodding you on. Your steps get a bit faster once you’re out of his sight.
When you get to the door you knock softly, cracking it open when there's no answer.
Carl is still in bed, asleep, one arm tucked under his pillow.
You step closer.
His blankets only half cover his shirtless body, his lower half dressed in the same flannel pajama pants Rick was wearing. When you round the bed you notice that his breathing changes, what you can see of the arm underneath the pillow tensing just enough that someone who wasn’t looking at him that closely wouldn’t notice it. His face starts to scrunch up the longer you stand above him.
You don’t really feel like talking, but you don’t want to scare him.
“Carl,” You whisper, and he opens his eye, face relaxing.
“Bambi?” He says, voice raspy with sleep as he gets up on his elbows. “Are you okay, what’s goin’ on?”
You shrug, Everything's okay.
He seems to relax at that, leaning back against his pillows and patting the other side of the bed. “Come up here?”
You walk around to the other side of the bed and climb onto it, ditching your sheets on the floor to slip underneath his. It’s cold at first, this side of the bed not having been warmed with his body heat. You almost shiver, but move closer to him instead.
There’s still a decent gap between the two of you that neither dares to close, but your legs tangle together beneath the sheets.
He flips onto his side so that you’re both laying like that, facing one another, and takes one of your hands in his, lacing your fingers together.
When Rick walks past almost half an hour later, you’re both still laying like that, smiles on your sleeping faces.
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An older man with silver hair leans up against the support beam underneath the awning they’re posted at, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and waving them in the younger man’s face with a hearty chuckle, watching his jaw drop.
“Are you kidding me?” The younger man whines. “I couldn’t find mine and you had a whole–”
Carol grabs him by the hair, yanking it back and pressing her blade into the soft skin of his neck, right above the jugular. The older man’s eyes widen and he takes a step forward, reaching for his gun only to stop when Daryl lifts it from the crate it was on and presses the very same weapon he was reaching for into his back.
“Raymond,” The young man says through clenched teeth, wincing when the word earns him a cut.
The older man holds his hands up and drops the cigarettes onto the pavement, trying to peer over his shoulder at Daryl.
“...What is it that you want?” He asks calmly, complying when Daryl pushes him forward a few steps to the edge of the shelter they’re under. “Just take it and let us go.”
Daryl doesn’t answer his question, instead circling him with the gun raised. “‘You Saviors?”
The older man shuts his eyes, grimacing. “Aye. –We were.”
“Get on your knees.”
The older man, Raymond, does as he’s told, but it takes Carol kicking the younger one in the back of the knee to get him to listen. He falls with a pathetic yelp, barely managing to catch himself with his hands before his face hits the concrete.
Daryl keeps circling the older man, looking down at him angrily.
“Did’ya know anythin’ about the little girl bein’ kept a few miles that way?” He asks, using his free hand to point. “Short hair. Knick in her ear. Ironed arm.”
The younger man’s eyes go wide and he looks at Raymond knowingly, mouth curled into a deep frown. Raymond looks back at him, then clenches his jaw shut, lowering his head.
After a moment, his brows furrow and he shakes his head to himself as if ashamed.
“We left!” The younger man whimpers, inching forward on his knees with wide eyes, voice filled with desperation. “We aren’t with them any more!”
Carol smacks the side of his head then yanks his hair back again, keeping his neck bared. “Keep movin’ like that and my hand might slip.”
Daryl’s feet start moving again, walking in circles around the man just like he had when he was in his cell, fingers scratching at the concrete walls in the hopes that something would change but every day he woke up and it was the same hell. The same song. He started wondering if he had ever really left. The torture became a kind of relief, the servitude the only time he got to see daylight.
He hates imagining what happened to you. Hates wondering what all you endured only to come out and somehow be able to pretend you were doing okay, thinking you could hide everything from him. He hates that it worked, and that he was about to let himself be forced to leave it alone and let them get away with it while you still suffer.
“But did you know? Would she know your face?” Daryl repeats louder, pointing the gun at the younger man.
The man yelps and leans away, trapped between the gun and Carol’s knife.
“He didn’t do nothin’ to the girl,” Raymond says slowly, like he isn’t sure of what he’s saying. “Like he said, we left them.”
Carol shakes her head as if disappointed, putting on the sweet mother hen voice she’s known for. “We’ve been watchin’ you for a few hours. –Saw your whole little group. We know there’s more of you, all Saviors. That doesn’t seem like leaving to me.”
“We did!” The younger man yanks against the grip she has on him, coincidentally avoiding the only question that matters in Daryl’s eyes. “I promise we left, just please let us go!”
The older man narrows his eyes, trying to get the other to stay quiet.
Daryl cocks his head at the non verbal communication, considering himself sort of an expert after you came into his life. He throws his arm out ahead of him, laughing joylessly. “He didn’t do nothin’ to her, huh? So who did? Is that guy with you people? –Comin’ near our home, where our kids live?!”
Raymond seems surprised. “That guy…?”
“It wasn’t–!” The younger man starts again, but this time Carol presses the blade into his throat.
He yelps again, starting a frantic string of calling the older man’s name and trying to pry the knife out of his neck with his hands, but it only makes the slit worse. Hot tears start slipping down his face as he chokes, looking at Raymond for help as he falls face-flat on the pavement, slowly dying.
Carol dusts off her hands and steps over him, coming closer to Daryl and the man, who is now glaring up at the two of them with a deep set frown.
“He was just a boy,” He rasps. “–You didn’t have to do that.”
He’s ignored.
“You knew what was happenin’ to her, didn’t you?” Daryl accuses, finally pressing the barrel of the gun to his head. “You let it happen.”
Raymond looks away. “Aye… Everyone knew.”
Daryl’s finger tightens on the trigger, mere millimeters away from ending the man’s life.
“Who was it?” He asks once more.
Raymond blinks as if thinking, then shakes his head.
“I couldn’t say,” The old man says, softly. “I wasn’t near her cell all that often. I just– heard things. Who it was and who it wasn’t, I couldn’t tell ya’ even if you lined all ‘em all up on their knees like this,” he says, nodding in the dead man’s direction.
The second he moves, Daryl’s finger presses down fully.
He surprises himself, flinching even though he’s used to the kickback of a gun.
Carol touches his shoulder, voice faint with the ringing in his ears, face splattered with the man’s blood.
“Come on, let’s get out of here before the rest of ‘em come back and find their buddies dead. –There’s another post not far from here I think.”
Daryl uses the back of his hand to smear the red on his cheek, eyes still wide on the sight of their corpses.
He doesn’t feel better.
He wanted an admission of guilt, or something. Anything to prove that he was actually protecting you by getting rid of them.
The men could have been lying.
But they also might not have been.
He doesn’t know anything more than what he knew when he left you this morning.
“Daryl,” Carol calls from a distance.
“I’m comin’.”
Daryl tucks the gun into the back of his pants and follows Carol away from the start of their carnage.
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You keep fidgeting with your feet underneath the table, feeling guilty as you pick through your oatmeal with a fork.
Judith and Carl finished half an hour ago, you aren’t sure why you can’t seem to will yourself to eat it. You’re just so tired, even after sleeping the whole night, on their couch, and in Carl’s room, you still feel lethargic.
“Somethin’ wrong?” Rick asks, approaching from behind you.
You hadn't even realized, but at some point while looking down at the mushy oats in front of you, your head had started to drop as you drifted off at the table.
You shake your head, shoveling another forkful into your mouth as if to prove you're not insulting his cooking.
Rick doesn’t seem satisfied, still staring at you with his forehead creased.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure Daryl will be back soon,” He says, lowering his voice.
I know, you sign.
You aren’t worried about whether or not Daryl will come home. You know he will. He always does.
Rick hesitates, his hand raised above you near your back. It looks like he's testing your boundaries, waiting for you to react to show him where you draw the line for physical contact between you and anyone that's not Daryl.
You stare at it uncertainly, then look back at him.
He slowly lets the hand connect with your shoulder, squeezing it gently, then rubbing in small circles.
“I know this is a touchy subject, but…” He sighs, “If you're still hurtin’ by the time he gets home, I think you should go see Siddiq again.”
You drop your fork, swallowing hard.
Carl looks up at the sound, hands paused in the air where he’d been playing with Judith a few moments before, his eye darting between the two of you.
Rick angles his body away as if he hadn't been talking, hand slipping from where it had been trying to soothe you, looking every bit as guilty as he feels.
Carl frowns, dropping the colorful toy in his left hand and standing up, his gaze growing critical as he notices how nervous you're both acting. Your jaw is clamped shut, shoes nervously fidgeting under the table. His dad can't seem to make eye contact with him, let alone commit to looking at something in the room.
He narrows his gaze on Rick, scowling. Things have already been tense between the two of them since their last fight. It doesn’t help that the man continues to seemingly pick on the very subject of their last argument.
It fully looks like he's about to confront Rick for whatever just happened between the two of you, but luckily before anything can be said, Judith bounds across the living room and presses her face against the window, excitedly shrieking.
“Ray-bow! Look, daddy, it’s a ray-bow!” She announces, tapping the glass.
Her brother is momentarily distracted, turning his attention to her and the precarious way she's balanced on her toes on a dingy white wooden crate in front of the window. His scowl fades to concern and he walks over to the windowsill, setting his hands over her ribs to keep her steady.
“Daddy!” The toddler keeps insisting. “Daddy, did you see?”
“I saw,” Rick says without moving any closer, a small smile playing on his lips that you can tell isn’t just from the relief of her diffusing the situation. “It's very pretty. Thank you for telling me.”
“Mhm,” The toddler seems satisfied at his acknowledgement, pressing her nose up against the glass between her hands and oinking.
Carl huffs out a laugh, sitting down on the crate next to her to look outside, one hand still braced on her back.
“Seein’ all that mud, little piggy?” He asks in a sweet whisper meant just for her.
She oinks again, bouncing.
The sight stirs something in you that you’d forgotten was there, your chest aching.
It’s confusing, because you know logically that aside from the weight you feel you know the pain isn't physical. It's more like… longing.
Judith stops bouncing and whips her head around to face her brother. “Car, we have’ta go outside! Pleasepleaspleasepleaseplease?”
“It’s still raining, Judy,” He says softly, setting his hand up against the glass and watching it fog around his palm.
“But what if the ray-bow leaves before it stops?” The little girl asks in a pout, jutting her lower lip out. “I wanna go outside. We’ve been inside foreveeeer.”
Rick reaches around you and takes your dish away while you’re distracted with the siblings, planning to set it aside in case you want to come back to it later, his face set into a small frown like he's concentrating.
“It’s only been one night,” Carl laughs.
You push your chair out from the table, walking over to the window to stand behind the siblings.
Outside the sky is a light steel blue, grey clouds hung like puffs of smoke in the sky. The rain is still coming down, slower and lighter than before, but coming from the clouds, touching down somewhere in the distance, is a brightly colored rainbow.
You make a small noise of surprise, getting down on your knees on the other side of Judith to stare at it with wide eyes.
You haven't seen a rainbow in what feels like forever.
The contrast of the brightly colored refracting light to the darkness of the cell you'd been in all that time has your heart racing. You want to touch it. –You know it's impossible, but you wish you could find a way to carry it with you everywhere. No matter how much time passes, no matter how bad the world gets, they're still there. The light still refracts, even in slivers, and it always astonishes you.
When you turn to steal a glance at Carl, you find him already staring at you, his eye flicking between yours to memorize the look you had on your face when you were looking outside.
Your cheeks tinge pink and you squirm under the weight of his gaze, having trouble keeping eye contact.
He smiles, looking down at your lips, then back up at you, unconsciously leaning towards you over Judith’s head. His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip and before you realize it, you're leaning in too.
THUD.
Rick drops a pile or rain gear on the floor behind all three of you, pretending not to have seen the exchange while simultaneously interrupting it.
“Ta-da!”
You were starting to get too close for comfort, even if he is trying to stop interfering so much.
“Outside!” Judith shrieks, jumping down from the box and sliding across the floor on her knees to look through the different colorful jackets and the small pair of worn yellow rainboots, which she immediately starts tugging on. “C’mon, hurry up, Car! I wanna play! C’mon! Let's go outside!”
“I, uhm–” Carl hesitates, looking between you and his sister.
He’s obviously been put in an awkward place, having to choose between going outside with his sister, who he loves more than anything in the world and would do anything to make her happy, and staying with you.
You know you’ve kind of been taking more of his attention than you deserve. She’s probably not used to him leaving the house all the time, because even when the two of you were hanging out in Alexandria, he almost never went full days without checking on her.
I can go home, You suggest, looking up at Rick for permission as you sign.
The man’s smile falls and he recoils, but before he can object, Carl does.
“No.”
Rick’s brows raise and you both turn to look at his son.
“I-I mean, you’re obviously comin’ with us if you feel up to it,” Carl amends, cheeks flushing. He looks towards his sister for a distraction. “Judith is fine with it. –You like Bambi, don’t you, Judy?”
The little girl pauses where she’s tugging the smallest raincoat on, looking you up and down.
“I guess…” She says in a monotone, her expression void of any particular leaning. She narrows her eyes. “He’s kinda weird but he’s nice.”
Carl cringes at the way she refers to you despite trying to explain to her multiple times that they’d been wrong before, that you were only pretending, like when she plays dress up.
“Bambi is a girl,” He corrects softly, looking down at the floor.
She doesn’t look convinced, but returns to putting on her jacket, yanking at the sleeves from all directions as if that's going to help it go up her arm. The buttons take her the most time, her face twisted into a frown as she spends no less than five minutes on each clasp, refusing any help she's offered.
When she’s finally finished, she picks up the other two jackets and throws them at you and Carl.
You look at one another, trying not to laugh at the serious look on her face and how bossy she's being.
It reminds Rick of Carl when he was growing up, but especially after the start of everything after the world collapsed, when he seemed all too eager to point out how stupid everything and everyone else was.
You pull the coat on.
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The rain has gotten too light to wash the blood from their clothes and the sweat from their skin, but their bodies are still chilled to the bone. The two posts nearest to the first they attacked are empty. With the sky as light as it is and how brightly the red on them stands out, –aside from how loud their steps have become, boots full of water sloshing every step– it's not likely they'll be able to get the jump on anymore Saviors.
They'll have to completely relearn the areas they're patrolling and learn where their new posts are once they find the bodies of the two men they successfully killed.
“We should go back,” Daryl grunts, looking down at all the deserted gear.
Carol nods. “We could.”
“But?”
“But there is a main street near here,” The woman shrugs, kicking a crate full of straw over. “‘Could be something decent there.”
Daryl scoffs, shaking his head fondly despite his disappointment with how the day turned out. “You want to go shoppin’?”
“Hey,” She smiles, holding her hands up with a half shrug. “You're the one that told everyone we went out lookin’ for somethin’ I needed.”
“Fine. But if we find any–”
Daryl cuts himself off as a walkie hidden under some of the gear in a crate crackles to life, going on in silence for a few beats before the voice on the other line comes through.
“We couldn’t find it.”
Carol looks at the man beside her, frowning as they both crowd the device and push everything else aside so that the speaker isn’t muffled.
“How many miles out did you go?” A second voice asks.
“About three. Got turned around and walked about two more in a different direction, but we didn’t see anything.”
“It can’t be far.”
Daryl feels something in his stomach twist. He reaches for the walkie, planning on pretending to be one of them in the hopes they won’t recognize his voice or realize that he isn’t one of them, but Carol catches his hand and shakes her head.
“You’ll spook them off,” She whispers over the men’s conversation.
“They’re talkin’ about her,” He whispers back, wincing with his eyes.
“You don’t know that,” Carol hisses. “What would you even say? You’d just be warnin’ them.”
“Alright, we’re headin’ back now. Let us know if you find anything out there.”
“Got it.”
The static vanishes, leaving the two of them in silence.
Carol is giving him a sympathetic look, her hand slowly releasing his arm as he relaxes once the men’s voices are gone.
“Daryl,” She starts.
“C’mon,” The man dismisses, face twisted into a frown. “Let’s go shoppin’ or whatever.”
He turns and starts to walk away, head hung low. Carol calmly follows him.
“I'm not preventing you from protecting her, I had to stop you before you did somethin’ stupid.”
“Uh-huh,” He scoffs.
Carol frowns, shoulder checking him when she catches up to start leading him in the right direction.
When they actually get to the street it’s full of abandoned stores and offices that look like they’d been raided pretty early on into everything, then probably again once The Saviors came along and took over the area. Hence why there’s so few mobile walkers left, most of the undead stuck sitting upright on benches or laying on the ground with knife wounds in their heads.
There’s nothing that particularly catches Carol’s eye at first aside from the gleaming broken glass littering the sidewalk and the way the moss has sprouted up the sides of each building like she remembers it doing to the trailer she and Ed had been in when they left Atlanta and found the group.
She sighs, rolling her eyes and turning to say something to Daryl when she sees that the man has stopped in front of a frilly looking store, something clearly meant to appeal to young girls. The sign is faded now, but looks like it was once brightly colored, half torn and scribbled over posters on the wall all showing young women smiling as they pose next to perfume bottles and shopping bags overflowing with clothing.
“Didn’t take you for the type,” Carol jokes, only to wind up recoiling when the man silently steps over the broken glass to walk into the store.
She steps in after him, bracing her hand on the bare window frame.
“Uh, Daryl?” She calls again, cocking her head when the man walks over to the closest empty shelf and swipes a finger across it, pilling the dust.
He looks up from his fingers, walking further into the store, eyeing the faded pink and yellow paint on the walls. He lowers his head, spotting something beneath empty shoeboxes, crouching down out of her view to get a better look at it.
Carol rounds the corner to see him holding a pair of jeans, the bottoms of the legs embroidered with flowers and swirling stems. –They’re years out of style, even for before the virus spread, but Daryl rubs the pads of his thumbs over the design like they’re treasure.
He looks up at her suddenly, face serious. “You think she’d like these?”
“What?” She replies, then it hits her why he walked in here the teenage girl still waiting for him at home who’s currently wearing borrowed clothes she doesn’t have a choice but to wear. “Oh… I’m not sure.”
He goes back to looking at the jeans, then folds them in half and tosses them over his forearm, continuing to explore the store in case he spots something else.
“I haven’t exactly been the best…” Daryl trails off and lets the sentence end there, not sure how to define your relationship with him. “I can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout all the stuff I should’a been doin’ with her. Tea parties and playin’ ponies and crap…”
“She’s a little old for that,” Carol laughs, moving around the store not far behind.
“But if she wanted to, I would,” The man counters, brows furrowed as he throws his arm out in front of him. His frustration fades and he sighs, looking down at the floor again. “...I don’t really know what I’m suppos’ to do with her anyway. I already messed up.”
He crouches down and picks up a half torn shirt, throwing it down just as fast.
“You’re supposed to do what you’ve been doin’. It works,” Carol shrugs.
“And what’s that?” Daryl snaps.
The woman doesn’t budge, narrowing her eyes when the man turns to glare at her. “Making her feel safe and loved.”
His brows raise, face paling as he turns his attention back to his search. He picks up some more pants, a few shirts, and Carol's hand hits something interesting when she goes up to the register looking for anything that might be useful.
She picks up the small velvety box, holding it up in front of the rest of the store.
She pictures herself, walking across a store all too similar to this one, the shelves packed with different clothing and mannequins draped in outfits Ed would never have let her spend money on. By her side, small hand in hers, is a familiar little blonde girl, hair cropped to her shoulders. Customers rush past them and the bright white lights are giving her a headache, but Carol has all of her attention on her daughter, watching the girl bounce up and down as she waits for their turn.
Ahead in the line there’s another girl sitting in a stool, wincing as the teenage employee uses a gun to puncture her ears.
When she’s finished she looks like she wants to cry, that is, until the employee hands her a mirror and lets her see the jewels in them. She grins, jumping down and walking past them with her own mother.
Carol smiles bittersweetly at the box, lowering it and bringing herself back to the dim, lifeless store they’re in.
She walks back over to Daryl and waits for him to look up before tossing the box over, watching him check the contents with confusion. “Most girls have their ears pierced. She doesn’t, but you should see if she wants to. –We have a little antiseptic to spare.”
Daryl nods like he’s been assigned a mission, tucking the box into his back pocket. “I don’t know how she’ll feel ‘bout that, given the knick in her ear.”
He thinks back to the day you were both taken, the conversation you never finished having about the old scars on your back. He doesn’t know why the idea reminds him of it.
“It’s in the cartilage,” Carol scoffs, pointing to her own helix. “She can still get her lobes pierced.”
“Hm.”
Daryl looks down at the clothes in his arms before standing.
“Let’s get the hell outta here.”
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Judith splashes in the puddles all around their new home, looking amused when the water ripples and even more amused when it gets her on her light blue jeans and gives her spots. She stops jumping from puddle to puddle when she sees the wide track of someone that definitely slipped in the mud, kicking along the shape to fling mud onto another trailer wall.
The two of you watch her from the porch, her brother having given up on stopping her some time ago when she got down on her knees to draw in the mud and make pies out of it, that same strange but comfortable space left between you that isn’t usually there.
It didn’t bother you at first. You watched as the residents of Hilltop walked by, their cups of coffee and bundles of lumber becoming lunches and dirty gloves as the evening rolled in.
But Carl keeps stealing glances at you. –Has been all day.
These ones are different than the loving ones he usually sends your way. Loaded. You can tell he’s trying to find a way to say something he doesn’t quite know how to say, getting more confident about speaking each time he doesn’t. He’s going to say something soon.
“Uhm,” He clears his throat, not to get your attention, but because his voice cracks. His legs are spread, one of them bouncing slightly, with his hands tightly clasped between them. “I… heard somethin’… about you, a little while ago…”
You shut your eyes, heart breaking.
It was inevitable. He was always going to find out, you just hoped you’d get to be the one to tell him. –Not like this, not in the middle of one of the calmest days you’ve had in months after finally starting to explore how you feel about one another.
You make a questioning noise, but it comes out wrong. It’s slow, like you know exactly what he’s talking about and are pretending not to.
“Siddiq was just talkin’, –uh, not to me– and he said…” You hear his chest rise and fall once, rapidly. “He said somethin’ about you having a… a pregnancy test under your bed?”
You try to keep the tears from coming as the lump in your throat worsens, fingers digging into your own skin punishingly.
You don’t deny the accusation, or turn to see the tension in him grow, misplaced guilt gnawing at every corner of his mind.
He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since he heard it.
“Did you…” He gulps. “–Have that because of me?”
You turn towards him, opening your eyes.
For a moment, you let the relief wash over you because he somehow still doesn’t know, but you know you can’t let it last. You have to tell him. You can’t let him think that he did this to you, especially knowing what happened to his mom.
You take a deep breath, shaking, savoring his scent for when you inevitably lose him because of this.
“No.”
Now that you’re looking at him too, he makes eye contact with you, holding it, his brows scrunching with remorse.
“Y-You don't have to lie to me, okay? I shouldn't have climbed into bed with you the night you got back. It was a stupid thing to do,” He continues, voice fraying at the edges with fear. “What we did was… ugly. I don't regret it for a second, but…” He whines, looking down at your stomach. “If I messed everythin’ up, you have to tell me. Please. You can't suffer because of my mistake.”
“Ca–” You choke on his name, trying not to cry.
The next breath you take fills your lungs with shame, chest brimming with it until you let it all spill out in a single sentence confession.
“They think I’m pregnant,” You hunch in on yourself, shutting your eyes again at how teary and high pitched your voice comes out. “–Because of when I was away.”
You hear him inhale sharply beside you.
“Oh…”
You sniffle.
The conversation stops.
Despite knowing this would happen, you tried not to picture how things between you would end. You wanted to live in the moments you had together. That doesn’t stop you from feeling disappointed by his reaction, though.
It cuts deep that he doesn’t even seem to care enough to be angry at you. He should be. He spent all that time helping train you and when it came down to it, you still couldn’t protect yourself. –And even before the two of you were this, you were friends. He should feel something, shouldn’t he?
You use the heel of your palm to swipe a few escaped tears away, trying to get a hold of yourself.
Judith gives a particularly loud squeal and you’re brought back to watching her play in the mud, the scene unfolding before you like a movie. Your body feels cold, but the pain in your chest has left you hollow and unfeeling to it. The little girl has a bucket now, which she didn’t have a few moments ago, and is attempting to make castles with it.
This is fine. You can accept this.
From the moment you got back, you knew you’d be nothing more than a burden on anyone that had the misfortune of getting close to you.
You see Carl shift in your periphery. You assume he’s going to stand up and walk away.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he slides closer to you on the steps, pretending to watch Judith as the distance between you closes and your thighs touch.
He sets his hand over yours, his fingers resting in the gaps between each of yours, waiting for you to flip your hand around.
You flick your eyes over to him briefly to find that he’s not looking at you, just waiting, as trusting and patient as he’s always been.
Your skepticism dies. You flip your hand over, sniffling dryly.
He laces your hands together, smiling bittersweetly while reassuringly squinting his eye.
The two of you return to looking blankly at his sister, watching her pull the bucket off of her first castle, the muddy blob falling apart the moment her hands are off of it. She frowns.
Then, after a moment, Carl starts speaking again, looking anywhere but directly at you.
“When we were on the road… just me, Michonne, and my dad… there were these guys,” His voice is soft and uncertain, heart pounding in his chest. He swallows again, because for some reason unbeknownst to him, his throat’s gone dry. “They called themselves The Claimers.”
You cock your head, remaining silent. Even if the story came seemingly out of nowhere, you can tell that whatever he’s telling you right now is serious.
Daryl spots you from across the way, already having dropped what he got for you off at the barn.
He looks down at your intertwined hands and feels his entire body tense, fists clenching as he prepares to storm over to the two of you and drag you home.
The closer he gets, though, the more his steps slow.
“They–” Carl laughs, but the sound isn’t genuine, it's really more of a hollow scoff, “–y’know, they claimed stuff… T-To be honest, I can't remember much else about them. When Daryl explained how he ended up with them to my dad I did my best to tune all of it out. It was too… fresh.”
Daryl comes to a stop, shoulders going slack as he realizes what story Carl is telling you. He’s ashamed to admit that until now, like most of their group, he’d forgotten all about what had happened to the boy that night. He’d been so focused on surviving he’d never checked on him after that to see if he was okay.
He wonders if anyone had.
It seems… unlikely.
The importance of what Daryl is witnessing hits him and it feels like his heart is being crushed in someone’s hands.
He slinks back into the shadows beside one of the trailers, watching the two of you from a distance, crossed arms heavy with guilt.
This isn’t for his ears. He doesn’t have the right to listen to a story he never asked to hear from the person who probably needed someone to.
“Anyway, one of the guys tried to–” Carl stops, dismissive tone cutting off with the shake of his head, “He just– He got on top of me and unbuckled his belt, and kept–” He falters again, letting out a laugh that seems more like a dry sob, sounding uncharacteristically panicked as he relives the events of that night, “I could feel him.”
Daryl’s stomach lurches.
You nod, understanding.
For him it was the belt, the pressure against his back. But for you it was the hands. Grabbing, tangling in the hair you wished hadn’t grown out, holding you down, sliding down your ribs and gripping all the skin you’d tried so hard to keep hidden before.
“My knife– it was right there, but I couldn't pull myself together for long enough to do anything. I– I was helpless and scared and I just wanted it all to end and–” He forces himself to stop, refusing to let the panic take over. A tear rolls down his face and he quickly swats it away with his free hand.
His eye darts to your intertwined hands and he squeezes, taking a deep breath.
You squeeze back.
“It still affects me,” He says, putting himself back on track to the point he was trying to make. “I still have nightmares sometimes, and I still can't… function properly. You– You saw. When I go to bed I still have to keep a knife under my pillow. –I hate it when other people wake me up, when they touch me it's like…being dragged out of that truck all over again.”
He takes a deep breath when he’s finished, letting it out slowly, still looking off into the distance with you.
“What I'm trying to say is that I get it, that's all.”
You scoot closer to him so that the entire left side of your body is pressed flush against him instead of just your leg.
You rest your head on his shoulder.
He rests his head on top of yours.
___
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