The Woodsong Fog - Lighteneverything (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

As soon as she recognises him, her thin, high shriek fading, the girl looks over his shoulder, a flicker of hope warring with the terror in her eyes.If she was alive out there and saw you comin’, she’d run the other way. There is nowhere for her to run in this dingy basem*nt, but it is clear she is hoping for Rick or Shane to appear behind Daryl. The kinship he feels for this bedraggled kid he barely knows, the second of connection as she isfoundand he is herfinder, vanishes. Daryl lowers the crossbow and she flinches, raising her arms to protect her head. Her hair is dark with dirt or sweat or both.

“Damn. I ain’t gonnahurtyou.” He resents having to say it, the wound in his side from yesterday’s search still throbbing, the stitches irritating him. He tells himself her reaction is a reflex. She’s been alone out here for three days; her fear probably kept her alive.

She drops her arms, and in the filth on her cheeks there are fresh tear tracks. He glares at her.

“You hurt?” he asks roughly. “Bit?”

She shakes her head, and tugs at the hem of her T-shirt, the pale blue fabric smeared with mud and some kind of oil. Daryl looks around the cramped basem*nt. A clutter of sports equipment lies against one wall, a football helmet, waterskis, fishing rods and paddles for a kayak. Against the opposite wall is the moth-eaten, sagging couch on which Sophia appears to have been sleeping. An old backpack serves as a pillow, and a half-eaten tin of sardines balances on one arm. The stink of the fish is undercut by the smell of rotting fabric. The floor of the basem*nt is two inches deep in black water, leaked weeks ago, he guesses, from a burst pipe somewhere in the wall. A wooden desk stacked with box files stands near the sporting equipment. The high, narrow windows are so caked with dirt that they let in only the most meagre moonlight, which sits on the water like gasoline on asphalt, a sickly rainbow refracted through a row of jars on the windowsill. These contain nails, screws, coils of wire, the jumbled bits and pieces every self-respecting man Daryl knows keeps near his toolkit.

“Where’s my Mama?” The girl’s voice, quavering and soft. He looks at her again, trying to remember how old she is. Nine? Ten? She is scrawny and nondescript, though he sees for the first time now that she has freckles across her nose, like the softer, less obvious ones her mother has. He scowls.

“At a farm nearby. We been stayin’ there while we look for you. Your momma—” He hesitates, and then lies. “—an’ your daddy, they been real worried.”

Her eyes well up, and he curses under his breath. Truth be told, her father has displayed little more than irritation at her disappearance, but has used it as a reason to spend his days in a camping chair in the shade, smoking and snoozing, looking hurriedly mournful when anyone takes notice of him. Her mother, on the other hand, has been distraught. Daryl shifts uncomfortably.Carol. He tries not to think of her by name mostly—there’s no point, she’ll die soon enough at her husband’s hands or a walker’s—but for some reason her distress at the missing girl set his nerves jangling, beginning an unbearable cacophony that he didn’t know how to stop other than searching for this kid. He tries to sound less gruff, because her blue eyes remind him of the woman’s and he doesn’t need the clamour of more misery in his head. Not when he’s just found her.

“Gonna take you there. But we gotta wait for mornin’.”

The thought is as depressing to her, apparently, as it is to him, judging by the way her face crumples. But it is dark out already; he didn’t actually sleuth her presence here like Sherlock f*cking Holmes—her tracks went cold at the creek. He came here seeking shelter for the night after he wandered too far from the farm. Not for all the beer between here and Maine would he venture out into the night with this kid and walk the long miles back to the farm. He tries to think of something comforting to say, and looks around again, water sloshing as he shuffles his feet. “Good spot you found here.”

She cries harder, her bony little shoulders shaking as she presses a hand to her mouth.Yeah, he thinks.Keep the noise down. Instantly, he hates himself, because he has seen her mother make the same gesture in the past three days, stifling her stricken weeping so her husband doesn’t lose his sh*t. The kid probably learnt it from her.

“Hey now.” He is running out of ideas, so he gives up and walks back to the stairs, ascending far enough to haul the trapdoor closed. God knows how the kid did it on her own with those stick arms. The house has no attic. If it did, he likely wouldn’t have found her, because he’d rather be up in the roof than shut in a dank basem*nt. The darkness of the room increases only slightly as he closes the door; the house above is darker than the night outside.

The girl has sat down on the couch, curling herself into the corner where the empty backpack is, and since there is nowhere else to sit, he joins her. With unusual care, he plucks the tin of fish from the arm of the couch before sitting down. Food is food, and he has nothing left of the jerky and apples he took with him when he left the farm this morning. He holds the can out to the girl, and she shakes her head.

“I’m full,” she whispers, and sniffs. Shrugging, he snags a sardine and, tipping his head back, drops it into his mouth. It is oily and salty, and his stomach rumbles.

“You hide somewhere else before this?” he asks as he pinches out another fish. “Found an empty tin of these. Makeshift bed.”

She says nothing, and he glances at her, licking oil off his fingers. She is staring at him, her eyes unsettlingly blue and rimmed with red. She nods.

“I cried when no one came in the morning and the walkers found me.” Her voice quivers. “So I had to run away. But I brought some cans with me.”

He grunts, genuinely impressed. “Smart.”

She stares at him a moment longer with her owl eyes. Her scrutiny makes him uncomfortable, Shane’s words still ringing in his ears, and he looks down at the can to avoid eye contact. Three sardines left, and some oil. He tips the whole lot into his mouth, viscous liquid dripping off his chin, and chews grimly. Tossing the can across the room, he reaches for the canteen of water at his waist.

“Ain’t like anyone’s comin’ back here,” he snaps, because there was a twitch of her sneakers when he threw the can, the pressure of her gaze encompassing yet another judgement. He thinks of the empty sardine tin neatly tossed in the trashcan at the last place she hid, and scowls, rubbing his oily fingertips together before unscrewing the canteen. There is a quiet sniffle from the other end of the couch, and his frustration threatens to erupt, the balls of his feet pressing into the swampy rug, ready to catapult him out of his seat. He closes his eyes and finds himself thinking again of her mother, who cried sometimes even before the child disappeared, while she cooked for the group and served meals—wept soundlessly and without expression, as though it were a necessary bodily function. Her husband ignored it, and so they all did. Daryl took off by himself when she got like that, to escape the itchy feeling under his skin at the sight of her face all wet with tears. There is nowhere he can go right now to escape the girl. He sighs, and drinks.

The water in his canteen is lukewarm and stale. He offers it to the kid once he’s had his fill, but she shakes her head. When he doesn’t retract his arm immediately—trying to figure out how to encourage her to have some—a look of fear crosses her face.

“No, thank you,” she whispers, and waits, tension in her neck and shoulders. He lowers the bottle and closes it, at last thinking of something to say to her.

“Your momma, Lori says she cleaned up the RV for you,” he says, a note of pride in his voice for having remembered this information. “Made it…nice,” he finishes lamely, and Sophia’s chest heaves, a sob audible in her throat before she grits her teeth and hides her face in the crook of her arm.

“Jesus.” Daryl lets his head fall onto the damp, reeking upholstery behind him and squints up at the beams above them. The humid air vibrates with the girl’s struggle to suppress her crying. He lifts his head. “Ain’t nothin’ to cry about now. You kept yourself alive an’ tomorrow you’ll be back with your momma. You—you did good.”

She gulps, scrubbing at her face, and stops weeping. He senses obedience in the change rather than recovery, but he isn’t going to encourage her to continue. They sit in silence again, and he starts getting sleepy. No need to keep watch down here, he decides. They’re shut in and they’ll need their energy tomorrow to get back to the farm.

Making sure his crossbow is within reach, balanced on top of an old pet carrier beside the couch to keep the string from getting wet, he wriggles deeper into the cushions and lays his head back once more. Nowhere near as luxurious as that bed in Hershel’s house where the old man stitched him up. But soft, at least, and quiet. He closes his eyes. Mosquitoes are buzzing in the basem*nt, drawn by the filthy water.

“Are there horses?” The question is just above a whisper, and she sounds congested, her nose all stuffy from crying. He lifts his head and peers at her.

“Huh?”

She hesitates, her arms folded across her chest, her shoulders hunched as though it has taken all her courage to ask the question.

“On the farm.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He settles back again. It is easier to talk when he isn’t looking at her. “Buncha them. At least one asshole.”

The sound is so quick as to be barely noticeable. But Daryl is attuned, to a wearying degree, to the people around him, and so he notices. A breath concertinaed into a…laugh? He turns and squints at her. She is beet red, watching him nervously.Jesus.

“You get a kick outta my language?” He tries to sound avuncular. It is a hopeless effort. She shakes her head rapidly, thin fingers gripping her upper arms as she presses herself back into the corner of the couch. He can smell her fear, hear the rabbit-quick staccato of her heartbeat. They are kin once more, for a moment that sickens him, and then it passes and all he can smell is grey water, all he can hear is the bugs and the woods outside.

“I’m kiddin’,” he barks, and her pupils flare, the skin of her arms greenish-white around her fingertips. He abandons any attempt at humour. “Should watch my mouth round kids. Sorry.”

He turns back to the ceiling so he doesn’t have to watch her stare at him. He is exhausted, not only from the injury in his side and the rigours of today’s search, but from the difficulty of being whoever this girl needs right now.Rick, his mind offers up, and he quells the bitterness that rises in the back of his throat, becauseRickwas the one who lost her in the first place. Not that it seems to matter. Her daddy blamed his wife—beat her bad, though the only visible evidence of this is the slow, stiff way she has moved the last three days, and the fact that she has worn long sleeves in the sweltering heat. She was hurt bad enough that Daryl gave her a wide berth; bad enough that he missed Merle extra, because Merle might just have whooped her husband’s ass while the rest of them looked the other way. Daryl? He’d like to pulverise that asshole’s face too, but it ain’t his problem, not when there are two cops right there.Just like the girl ain’t your problem. He quashes the thought. He doesn’t want to think about exactly why he’s been so focused on finding her.

The girl lays her head down—Daryl observes this out of the corner of his eye—and gives another quiet sniff.

“Go to sleep,” he mutters. “Got a lotta walkin’ to do tomorrow.”

Dawn comes with barely a change in the air of the basem*nt. Daryl wakes at sunrise as usual, but he doesn’t get up, rolling his head to watch the grubby windowpanes lighten. For a moment, the dust and the dishwater light melt into a solid, dull shade, a strip of featureless grey. Then the sun moves, and the panes are dirty again, the light distant.

He is stiff and sore, the stitches in his side aching, the muscles bruised in his fall from the horse protesting more now than they did yesterday. Hershel warned him he needed to rest. But if he’d listened, he’d be in that comfy upstairs bed right now instead of here, in a room that stinks of fish and sewerage, the missing girl sleeping silently at her end of the couch.

He steals a glance at her. Her arms are folded, her head resting on them and her legs drawn up to her chest, her body folded into the smallest space possible. Asleep, she does not provoke nearly as much anxiety in him. She appears peaceful, doll-like besides the dirt on her face and, he now sees, a few scratches beneath it. Her face is caught between a childish roundness and the shape it will become as she grows, revealed sooner than it should be by her sardine diet for the past three days. She will look like her mother, Daryl thinks, the sweep of her jaw and her long neck, though there is something of her father in her face, too, blurring the sharpness of her features. The woman is a mess of incongruities, a face from a fancy painting capped with a rough buzzcut, skin smoother than Daryl’s but hair as grey as Dale’s. Eyes—f*cksake. He huffs out a sigh and frowns at the sleeping child. As if she senses the change in his gaze, she stirs, her limbs clamping closer to her body in instinctive protection.

“Mornin’,” Daryl says. She yawns, covering her mouth with one hand. Her nails are bitten to the quick, just like his, dried blood clotted beside her thumbnail. “You got any more sardines?”

They share her last tin, splitting it down the middle, though she tries ineffectually to suggest he take more. He scowls at her and she keeps quiet. He has noticed her momma portioning out her family’s food, dividing her own between her husband and her daughter until she is left with barely anything for herself. He doesn’t need the kid doing that sh*t before she has to walk miles through the woods.

He drinks more of the brackish water in his canteen and gives her the rest. The faucets in this house are dry—he checked when he found the place last night—but he’ll refill the bottle on their walk. She drinks obediently, wiping the mouth of the canteen with her hand before returning it to him. It makes him aware of not having done the same for her, and he shoves the water into his pack irritably.

“C‘mon.”

She hesitates as he climbs the steps to the trapdoor, gazing around as though leaving a place that means something to her, and not a gloomy sh*thole where she might have died. He shakes his head.

“Saidc’mon. You wanna see your momma tonight we gotta get goin’.”

Belatedly, he wishes he had softened his voice; he didn’t mean to half yell at her, to hold her mother over her that way. But it works. She scurries up the steps behind him and is ready when he thumps open the trapdoor, following him into the cool, bleak hallway of the house.

He did a cursory once-over of the place when he got here yesterday, but it’s lighter now, and he’s less exhausted, so he sticks his head into the rooms lining the hallway as they head for the front door. Musty furniture, dust-covered bookshelves and sideboard. In the bedroom, he finds only men’s clothes, and though he takes a few shirts he drops them at the front door in favour of a heavy raincoat, thick enough for storms, large enough to be useful for a multitude of purposes. He folds it and stashes it in his pack, and then, glancing at Sophia, he goes into the kitchen and finds a butcher’s knife. A little big for her hand, not useful in the long term, but good enough. He proffers it to her handle first, and her eyes widen.

“Take it,” he tells her. “Aim for the eyes or the temple if it’s a walker. Anywhere if it’s a person—hard enough to hurt ‘em.”

“A person?” she whispers, and he marvels that she should need this explanation despite having grown up with a man like her father.

“Yeah, a person. There’s bad people out there, not just walkers.” He crouches in front of her so they’re eye to eye. There is a sheen in hers, and her fingers are tentative on the handle of the knife as she accepts it. “I’m gonna keep you safe. ‘Kay? But that don’t mean you don’t need a way to keep yourself safe too.” He stands up, the eye contact suddenly too much. “Like you did till I found you.”

The fresh air, despite the heat already setting in for the day, is a relief after the basem*nt, the forest full of the sounds of morning. He moves too quickly at first, doesn’t realise the girl is panting behind him, red-cheeked, until he stops to fill his bottle at a stream. She is surprisingly quiet for a child—rolls her feet instinctively over the forest floor, perhaps in imitation of him—and he has almost forgotten she is there. She stops at his shoulder as he holds the canteen in the current, and he realises she is breathing quickly. He glances at her and hands her the water.

“Shoulda told me to slow down,” he mutters, aware that she was as likely to do that as she was to sprout wings and soar over the trees. She shakes her head, and there is a stubborn set to her mouth he hasn’t seen before.

“I want to get back to Mama,” she says, and returns the bottle, wiping it carefully. He takes a long drink and refills it, considering her as he screws on the lid.

“All right,” he says, and he almost smiles, his mouth twitching in one corner because of the determination on that freckled little face. He did not expect it from her. But then again, he didn’t expect her still to be alive. Hope and expectation, he has known since he was a child, are not the same thing.

Afterwards, he is angry with himself that the emptiness of the woods, the absence of the dead, didn’t draw his attention sooner. The closer they get to the farm, the quieter the trees become, as though the birds and small creatures have fled the area. But he only realises this later. He is less and less aware of his surroundings as his eagerness to deliver the child grows. He listens with half an ear for danger, and keeps an eye on the changing shadows, but mostly, he thinks of the moment the girl’s momma will see her again. Each time he imagines that moment, he thinks of a statue in his hometown church, where he went only once, for his momma’s funeral: the serene mother holding her child, Mary’s face smooth and peaceful despite the chipped paint. He has seen other versions of her since, in churches between here and Atlanta, and he likes her better than the effigies of Christ crucified that appear in some. If he were to be convinced of God’s existence, he would more likely find it in that woman’s gentle contemplation than in the resigned despair of the man.

The trees thicken in the last two miles before they reach farmland, and there is no high ground from which to spot the smoke that is smudged against the sky. In the shade of the canopy, the pair trudge in silence as they have since the bungalow. Conversation is a waste of energy, and it comes naturally to neither of them. The girl is no longer flushed. Her face is white as chalk, her steps slower and slower, her T-shirt sticking to her with sweat.

But half a mile out, he smells it: the acrid stink of burning. And the sharpness of it is enough to jolt him back into full presence in the forest, its eerie quiet the first thing, belatedly, which he notices. He halts, holding a hand up to the girl, who looks at him in bewildered exhaustion. There is no sound other than their breathing, and the crack of twigs as she arches one foot in its filthy sneaker, stretching her calf muscle.

The smoke is coming from the direction of the farm; that much he can tell without seeing it. Fear grips him, shapeless at first and then specific:Carol. He thinks of her first—not Rick, not Dale, not Hershel or Glenn or any of the other women. He thinks of her because of the kid, who has stopped shifting and grown very, very still at his side.

“What’s that smell?” she asks quietly, and he doesn’t answer, because if she can pick up the scent then she already knows what it is.

“Need to move a bit quicker,” he says, and tears fill her eyes. He unstraps his crossbow and hands her his pack, taking her knife and shoving it in his belt. “Put this on your back. Then climb on mine.”

Despite his adrenalin, despite the distraction of the fire ahead, the manoeuvre is a deeply uncomfortable one. He cannot remember when last someone touched him other than in fights, and it is worse because the girl has to cling to his back, the sweat-soaked cotton of his shirt, the scars beneath it which he imagines she will somehow sense. He hangs his crossbow awkwardly across his front and crouches so she can put her arms around his neck, his hands under her knees. At the first sensation of her skin—a tiny wrist brushing the side of his neck—he shudders and has to fight the urge to fling her off. She waits, as though the sudden tension in his muscles is something she understands, and then she completes the movement and he hoists her up.

Only in last stretch of trees before the farm begins does Daryl grasp what has happened. Increasingly, the forest floor is chaotic, branches broken and leaves kicked aside, dirt churned up where nothing is growing. The horde on the road the day Sophia went missing dragged up the roadside in the same way, their lurching footsteps making and erasing tracks until all that was left was haphazard destruction. This horde must have passed through in the night, and, he realises as he reaches the treeline at last, they crossed perpendicular to the route he has just taken with the girl.

The barn is burning, what is left of its walls smouldering, sending a steady trail of smoke skywards. The grass of the field where Daryl pauses is trodden flat, and in a fence to his left he can see a walker caught between the bars, hooked on a nail. Sophia’s arms tighten around his neck.

“Mama,” she whispers, and all his fear is in her voice, right at his ear. He drops her legs and lets her land on her feet, grabbing his shirt to steady herself.

“Stick close,” he barks, and lifts his bow. It is evening now, the sky behind the smoke painted in lurid shades of pink and purple. It will be dark in an hour.

The farmhouse still stands, but to reach it they have to cross two fields and pass the remains of the barn. Daryl puts down three walkers as they head towards the house, ignoring the squeak the girl makes as he puts a bolt through the head of the first one, a woman in a business suit and a gold locket that flashes briefly in the dying sunlight as she falls. The other two have been dead for longer, clothes and hair ragged and washed out from exposure to the elements. They are picking clean the rib bones of Nellie the horse, whose mangled body lies at one end of the pasture. Daryl doesn’t stop longer than it takes him to stab each one in the temple with his buck knife.

Beside the barn, among smoking planks of wood, are two bodies, charred and unrecognisable; impossible to know without looking more closely whether they were human yesterday, or dead before they burned. Sophia has not let go of the corner of his shirt, and he has not shaken her hand off. If he did, he would have to turn back and look at her to make sure she was with him, and he does not want to see her crying again.

There are a handful of other walkers wandering the farm, but he does not bother hunting down the ones that aren’t in their way. These are the stragglers, dragging damaged limbs or so glutted by feeding that they move even more slowly than usual, and some invisible tide seems to carry them in the direction taken by their predecessors. Maybe their steps default to the heavily worn trail from one end of the farm to the other. Maybe the scent of the other dead guides them. Whatever the case, he leaves them to it.

He passes his bike as they approach the house: knocked over in the dirt, but intact. Later he will see if it still goes. Dread sits low in his belly at the sight of the house, its windows smeared with blood and grime, handprints visible on the panes. The porch railing has sagged and broken in places, and there are walker bodies between the barn and the house, bullets in their heads.

He and Sophia are almost at the steps to the wraparound porch when the front door, somehow intact though streaked with gore, opens:Sophia Sophia, the woman’s voice cutting through the miasma of smoke and silence. The child releases his shirt and steps forward, and then, wordlessly, responds with a movement so fluid that it is almost beautiful, the way an animal is beautiful as it starts to run. For an instant, those coltish limbs find a desperate grace, the girl shrugging off the pack, flying up the steps and into the arms of the woman coming to meet her.

In the doorway, the husband stands, but Daryl can’t look at him directly, because the woman’s face is bruised, one eye blackened, a fresh scab in the corner of her mouth; and one of the bare arms embracing her daughter has a plum-coloured handprint above the elbow, the flesh pressed and pressed until blood burst to the surface. The girl does not notice these things, or does not acknowledge them. She is clinging to her mother and sobbing, heedless of the way the woman tries to favour her ribs on one side, and a moment later Carol gives up, relinquishes herself to the embrace, though a spasm of pain passes across her face. Her eyes are closed, her hands soothing the child with a slow, gentle caress of her back.My baby my baby. Daryl’s throat is dry and achy.

“Where was she?” It is Ed speaking, and Daryl flicks his eyes to the man’s face, his slouching shoulders, the hand resting on the doorjamb. The knuckles are red, and rage passes through Daryl, so intense, so complete, that he is made weightless by it, and then made dizzy by gravity’s rushing return.

“House ‘bout ten miles out.” He jerks his head towards the barn. “The hell happened? A horde? Where’s everyone else?”

Carol stands up, hugging the girl to her side, her fingers buried in dirty strands of hair. Father and daughter have not yet acknowledged each other, Daryl realises.

“They fought and then they fled,” the woman tells him, misery and resentment in her voice. “They left, in cars, no one would stay to wait for you and Sophia.” She glances over her shoulder and ducks her head. “Ed and I, we hid in the attic from the horde.” She covers her mouth with one hand, her eyes swimming with tears. Daryl bites into his thumbnail. “Thank you,” she says, softly, as though her gratitude is a secret. “Thank you for finding her.”

He shrugs, averting his eyes from hers.

“C’mon an’ say hello to your daddy now.” The man holds out his arms in a gesture that appears unnatural where it should be anything but, and Sophia steps reluctantly away from her mother. Daryl rocks on the balls of his feet, restless, agitated by the new bruises on the woman and the discovery that the four of them are alone here.

Ed hugs the girl close, enveloping her in his arms, putting his mouth to her ear and murmuring something no one else can hear. She nods, her eyes lowered, her body stiff as though she were made of wood.

“Which way’d they go?” Daryl asks Carol’s feet.

“I don’t know.” Despair in the words, and shame. “It all happened so fast.”

“Buncha cowards.” Ed keeps Sophia with him, resting against his belly, her back to him and his arms across her chest. Daryl frowns. “My wife an’ me, we been perfectly safe in the attic.”

The fingers of one of Carol’s hands drift absently to the wound in the corner of her mouth, a delicate flutter of contact that suggests it is hurting her. Daryl looks down at the toes of his boots, the seams in the wooden steps.

“Do you think we can catch up to them?” the woman asks. He makes himself look at her, the swollen eye and blue cheekbone, the puffy lip. That rage drifts through him once more, its edges extending now beyond Ed, to the people who left her alone with him after seeing what he did to her when Sophia went missing.You left her too. The ground is hard under his feet, the heft of his own body too much for a moment.

“Not tonight,” he says, his voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “Kid needs to sleep an’ eat. An’ we won’t see sh*t once it’s dark.”

“They’ll be back.” There is a note of unearned authority in Ed’s voice, a challenge, and Daryl bristles.

“Why? Far as they know the place is burnt down.” He shrugs. “If it were me, I’d keep goin’. Keep headin’ away from the big cities.”

Ed snorts, his hands moving to Sophia’s shoulders, and Carol tenses minutely.

“Why don’t we find some food,” she says in a gentle, soothing voice completely at odds with her posture. “And you two can wash up and get some rest.” She glances at Ed, her head bowed, and he narrows his eyes at her for a second before nodding sharply.

“We’ll make plans in the mornin’,” he says with an air of condescension, and turns into the house before Daryl can respond, moving Sophia ahead of him, still gripping her shoulders. In his wake, the silence between Daryl and the woman is taut as a violin string, his every breath threatening to set it quivering. Slowly, he meets her eyes, needing something he can’t articulate even to himself. Despite the swelling around one eye, her gaze is clear, almost silver as the twilight turns towards darkness. He can see she wants to follow her daughter inside, can see that she is straining towards the child with a need that fills him with yearning of his own.For what, he thinks. He doesn’t know.

“Thank you, Daryl.” Her mouth barely moves. The string hums and she blinks. “I don’t—I don’t know how to thank you.”

He means to dismiss her thanks again, but finds to his surprise that he wants to claim it. When he nods in acknowledgement, she smiles, and he is glad he didn’t shrug off her gratitude a second time. Her smile is soft and generous, so much so that it cracks open the scab in the corner of her mouth. And as he walks past her into the house, he is aware of her hand rising to her lips, one fingertip catching a bright bead of blood.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

She bathes her child the way she hasn’t been allowed to for years, wiping a soapy washcloth gently over her back and legs, shampooing her hair with slow, firm fingers. Sophia stands in the metal tub shivering—she was too tired to wait for a fire to heat the water—and swaying in her exhaustion. As she soaps and rinses her daughter, Carol waits for the displaced grief inside her to dissipate, to stop pressing against her breastbone and dissolve back into her lungs.She’s alive. The skin clings to the girl’s ribs, and her spine is knobbly and hard. Above the bathroom in which Carol has locked them, Ed is moving about in the attic, his footsteps startling her each time they stop directly overhead. He is waiting for his wife to prepare food for him; that she has chosen to take care of Sophia first will be taken as defiance.

Daryl has disappeared. He dropped his pack at the foot of the attic stairs, took a long drink at the pump in the yard, and loped off into the dark with his crossbow. He must be starving, bone weary. Carol’s fingers tighten on the towel as she thinks of it, tugging Sophia’s hair, and the girl makes a soft moan of protest.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Carol kisses the damp crown of her head and pulls the girl against her chest in a quick embrace. She doesn’t yet know what happened to Sophia, exactly, but she is unhurt apart from bruised legs, and scratched arms and cheeks. She is alive, against all odds.

Carol turns to the window as the child dresses. The moon is rising, thinning the velvet dark to gauze. Something moves near the stand of trees across the yard. Frowning, Carol rests her hand against the window, her breath misting the glass as she watches. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, to accept the half-made moonlit world, but gradually the moving shape resolves into Daryl, his crossbow raised to his shoulder. He is shooting the last of the walkers wandering the farm, the ones who are stuck or simply lingering, she realises. He pauses over a corpse to pull out a bolt, and stamps its head in with one boot. Carol flinches. There is a violence in his movements exceeding that which is necessary. It makes her nervous.

She takes Sophia up to the attic and leaves her with Ed for long enough to fetch food from the kitchen: canned apples and canned beans, partially mashed together. Baby food for her baby. There are empty cans on the counter, which means Ed has fed himself, and she will have to compensate for her neglect in some other way. Her hands shake as she scoops the fruit and vegetables into a bowl. She doesn’t realise she is crying until tears drip into the food, and she swipes at her cheeks quickly. It is what it is. Her daughter is home. Nothing else matters.

In the attic, Sophia sits half asleep as Carol spoons the mixture into her mouth,eat a little more for Mama. Across the room, Ed sits on an old crate, watching them, and Carol angles herself, automatically, to conceal the girl from him. When Sophia’s tiredness defeats her hunger, the two of them lie down, the child in Carol’s arms, limp with sleep while her mother is still whispering how much she loves her.

He says nothing when she gets up, but his pants are open, and he is hard, stroking his erection as he waits for her to reach him. He grabs her arm, though she doesn’t resist—she never resists—and then she is on her knees bent over the crate. She takes it all, the pain and the humiliation and the shame, and the hate in every one of her husband’s movements, and she pushes it down down down as Ed grunts, down to where she carries all the rest of it, heavy and demanding as a child in her womb. Her ribs ache. And then she curls up next to Sophia, hiding against the child’s back, ignoring the scrape of the crate on the boards, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, the broken gasps of pain. When her husband drags her back into her body, hissingsay it say it you bitch, his hips locked against her ass, she presses her lips together in refusal, and the end is so brutal that it must surely hurt him too. But he comes, and as he does, he uses the palm of one hand to shove her face against the rough wood of the crate, pressing until she fears her jaw will dislocate.

He gets off her. She knows better than to move. He spits on her lower back, a glob of saliva already cooling as it splats onto her skin, and pulls up his zipper. She wonders detachedly where Daryl is, because even though what happened here happened in almost complete silence, her ears are ringing as though with her own screams, the quiet of the attic as startling as though a terrible noise had suddenly ceased.

She waits where she is, heat trickling down her thighs, until Ed is on their bedroll, snoring, and then she gets to her feet. He will sleep for at least a couple of hours, which means it is safe to leave him up here with Sophia. Carol gathers her pants and holds them up as she limps out the attic and down the stairs. In the bathroom, she washes with the last pail of clean water hauled for Sophia’s bath. The house is silent.

She goes downstairs when she is clean, her hair in short, ugly spikes, beaded with cold water. The front door is open, and she halts in the hallway in fright. But in the darkness above the porch steps, a cigarette glows. Daryl, sitting on the top step between the open door and any danger that might approach. She folds her arms across her chest, as though it might hide what Ed has done, and goes outside.

He does not turn at the sound of her footsteps, and she makes an effort not to limp, although she hurts between her legs. He has just washed too, at the pump. His hair is dripping onto his shirt, and his arms are streaked with water. His crossbow leans against the stair rail.

“Have you eaten?” she asks guiltily, wondering if he, too, will be angry with her for taking care of Sophia first. He inhales slowly, the end of the cigarette flaring orange, and does not turn.

“Yeah.” He gestures to his side with an odd grace, and she notices the remains of a loaf of bread on the boards. Maggie baked it yesterday morning, and there was not much left by the time the horde came through.

“That’s not…wait here,” she says. For some reason it is easy to instruct him in this way, when she would never dare say the same to Ed. Daryl doesn’t respond, but when she returns from the kitchen with a plate of beans, corn, and the last two hard-boiled eggs from yesterday, he is where she left him. It’s a lot of food, more than she should serve him given their current situation. But he brought her daughter back. He deserves at least a full meal.

He stubs out the last of his cigarette when she descends the first step, flicking the butt into the darkness and peering at her sideways, suspiciously. She holds out the plate to him, and he scowls.

“Said I’d eaten.” His eyes slide away from her.

“That bread was stale. And you must be so hungry.” Cautiously, she lowers herself to the other end of the step and puts the plate down between them, collecting the bread crusts in a small pile out of the way. He glances at the food, a muscle in his jaw tightening, but does not touch it. Warm salt fills the back of her throat, and she swallows, leaning against the stair rail. She should leave him; perhaps, like a wild animal, he would eat if she weren’t here. But she is leaden with exhaustion, unable to make herself stand up.

Minutes pass. Daryl picks at his nails. The air in the yard tastes of woodsmoke, bitter and dry.

“She okay?” he asks eventually, with a suddenness that makes Carol startle.

“Yes,” she replies. “Just tired. Thank you for—”

He flicks a hand dismissively, and she stops. Far away, at the edge of the woods, an owl lets out a low call. It seems to resonate with every hurting place in her, her blood thrumming in response.

“Daryl?” she says, as much to silence the hum of pain through her body as to draw him out. His eyes flick to her face, and away. “Will you tell me about finding her? Please?”

She is surely pushing the boundaries of what this man will tolerate from her, and if he hits her or curses at her she has only herself to blame. But after the last few days, the last few hours, there doesn’t seem to be much left for her to fear. Not here, in the dark on the steps, the moon overhead and the nightbirds taking flight. What is more pain when her daughter is alive? What is the anger of another man when her child has come home?

He starts speaking abruptly, obliging her request, describing the bungalow where he sought shelter. His voice is gravelly and soft, and he mumbles a little, so she has to strain to hear some of what he says. He doesn’t pretend to heroism; he tells her outright that he found her daughter through sheer luck.But you were there, Carol thinks.If you hadn’t searched, you would never have stumbled across her. She doesn’t say it out loud, afraid that if she interrupts him, he will stop talking.

There is a reticence in his manner she hasn’t noticed before. He was a vague, intimidating presence until Sophia disappeared, a foul-mouthed, volatile stranger whose brother terrified Carol. Three days ago, he came suddenly into sharper relief for her, as the only person willing to look for her daughter. But he was gone then, all day every day. Now, she begins to understand that he is perhaps a different creature to Merle. To Ed.

She hands him the plate as he finishes telling his story, and this time he takes it, ducking his head. She doesn’t watch him eat, but turns her gaze to the distant treetops outlined in white, the wood of the railing smooth against her temple. He eats quickly, with his hands, licking his fingers loudly at intervals. It makes her smile until she thinks of Ed spitting on her. Closing her eyes, she pushes the memory down again.

“Here.” The plate clatters on the step, and she tenses, her eyes flying open. He freezes, jerks his hand back from the dish. She looks down. He has eaten half the food and left the rest. As she frowns, he mutters, “Eat.”

“I—” She hesitates, and he nudges the plate closer to her.

“Ain’t no use to anyone if you’re starvin’,” he snaps, and she hunches her shoulders in shame, withdrawing instinctively from the irritation in his voice. Slowly, obediently, she picks up the plate and starts to eat.

xxxx

He cannot stand the way she shrinks from him, just like her daughter did, blue eyes fixed on him as though he might slap her. He gets up and descends the stairs, intending to walk off the restlessness her presence has awoken in him. But he stops when his feet touch the dirt. When she sat down beside him, the skin on the bruised side of her face looked roughened, the light turning matte in a smudge across her cheek. He didn’t want to notice it, but he did; didn’t want to be so sure that earlier, there had been no scrape there. But now he finds he cannot walk away and leave her, battered and forlorn, on the porch steps. He has always had an oversupply of pity in him—for runts and rejects, blind puppies and the stray kittens Merle used to drown. It is a weakness, and he feels it in this moment more than he has for years: the way the hardness in him grinds open to expose something soft, a stone lifted from the dirt to reveal the delicate, silken twist of an earthworm.

He reaches for his cigarettes and lights one, his back to her, his shoulders aching. The sound of her eating is quiet, but he is aware of every swallow, every touch of the fork to the tin plate. He wonders whether she would have eaten at all if he hadn’t made her, and he sighs out a stream of smoke, squinting into the darkness. It must be after nine by his guess. Two pastures away, he can just make out the shape of the horse’s corpse.

“You think they all made it?” he asks. “You manage to see?”

“I don’t know,” she replies. The confidence in her voice from earlier, when she came outside, is gone. She sounds like she does when she speaks to her husband. “There was smoke, and everyone was running to find cars. Hershel was shooting the walkers.” She pauses. “Patricia—she got bitten. The rest of them, I can’t say. Ed was—”

Silence. He exhales thoughtfully and turns to face her.

“Your jeep is standin’ open round back.” He waves his hand towards the house. “Key in the ignition. Guess someone couldn’ get it to start.”

Through the darkness, he sees her face colour. She smooths her fingertips along one cheekbone, over the bruise, over the graze, and lowers her eyes.

“I wouldn’t go without Sophia” is all she says, her voice flat. She puts the plate down on the boards, and he stares at the mark above her elbow until she raises her eyes, opaque as mirrors, and looks at him.

“Are you going to—are you going to leave us?” She is trying to keep her voice level, but he can hear the faultlines in it, the way it runs skew towards the end of the question. He picks a fleck of ash off his lip and takes another drag. He thought about leaving while he hunted down the walkers on the farm, about escaping this nervous woman, her terrified child and bullying husband. Thought about getting on his bike and heading the way he reckoned the others had left. In this world, if people aren’t useful, they’re dangerous: a distraction, a drain on resources. None of the Peletiers have much to offer him.

“Dunno,” he says at last, although hedoesknow, he knew the moment he saw that scrape on her face, hurt laid upon hurt as though there is no limit to what she is expected to endure. Her face falls, and she looks down quickly to try and hide her disappointment. Something in him warms for a second, and then he remembers that he is useful to these people, just like he was to Rick and Shane. She knows it as well as he does.

He leans against the stair rail and tips his head back, exhaling into the sky, watching the haze of smoke obscure the stars. The woman stands up, stiffly, awkwardly, bending to take up the plate.

“Let me pack you some food if you leave,” she says softly.

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight.” He looks down and scuffs the dirt, letting ash drift from the end of the cigarette.

“Good. That’s good.” She lingers until he looks at her. Her arms are lean, both stronger and frailer than they were back at the quarry, and her clothes hang from her hips and shoulders. He meets her eyes, glowering, and she blinks rapidly. “If you—will you sleep in the attic with us?” She hesitates and then finishes in a whisper. “Please.”

His refusal is halfway out his mouth before he catches it, a jumble of consonants. She is looking just past his left shoulder, her hands holding the plate tightly, her body braced for what he is about to say. He doesn’t want to sleep up there with the three of them, in the mustiness of the rafters. But he can think of only one reason she would proffer the invitation, and he cannot bring himself to refuse.

“Whatever.” He drops his smoke and crushes it out, striding past her and grabbing his crossbow. At the door, he stops and waits, waving her in before he shuts and locks it. In the narrow hallway, as they pause, he can smell her—soap and clean skin, the honey scent of shampoo.

“I’ll put this in the kitchen,” she murmurs, and he says her name for the first time as she turns away from him.Carol. Her face is different when she turns back, soft everywhere suddenly, her eyes and mouth and chin, and he says her name again just to taste the shape of it.

“Carol.”

“Yeah?” There is a teasing note in her voice, light as air, but she presses her lips together instead of smiling, as though she is fighting herself. He frowns.

“Thanks for the, uh, for the food.”

As suddenly as it vanished, the sadness returns to her face, and his frown deepens as he tries to work out what he has done wrong. She smiles this time, but there is no levity in it.

“You’re welcome, Daryl. I—owe you a lot more than a meal.”

She is gone before he can reply, slipping into the dark kitchen, and he trudges towards the stairs. On the first floor landing, he waits, listening. But though there is no sound from the kitchen, she doesn’t follow him, and he goes up to the attic alone.

xxxx

She sits at the kitchen table to give Daryl time to fall asleep. She would be frightened down here on her own if he hadn’t seemed confident leaving her to her business. Somehow, she is certain he would not have left her down here if she wasn’t safe. He is a protector, she thinks, though he seems to resent whatever it is that compels him to take that role.

She wonders whether he knows that was the first time he’d ever spoken her name to her. Probably not.Carolsounds like a different person on his tongue, in that rough, quiet voice; someone worth talking to, notbitchorc*ntorbrain-dead slu*t. She lowers her face to the kitchen table, her bruised cheek, and sinks the weight of her skull into it gradually, the pain a dull warning and then a throbbing burn. She is not worth talking to. She is not even worth f*cking, except as a last resort.Say it say it. If Sophia had died in those woods, Carol would have died too. Her daughter is the only reason she lives.

She stops in the bathroom to wipe her face on her way up to the attic. The door stands open, and Ed is snoring loudly on his back, his belt and button still undone. She peers through the gloom to make sure Sophia is asleep, which she is, in the same posture in which Carol left her.

Only when she steps inside and shuts the attic door does she realise the room smells of sex, of sweat and cum, the stink trapped in the heat of the roof. Her stomach churns, her step faltering as she reaches the bedroll she shares with Ed. Something scrapes against the floor across the room, and she sees him then, sitting beneath the attic window, his pack beside him, his elbows resting on his bent knees. They stare at each other in silence, and for a moment she wishes he wasn’t here, wishes he had left tonight instead of thinking whatever he is thinking right now about her, about what she and Ed did in here before she came downstairs. Her eyes sting, and she looks down at the bedroll, one edge stained brown.

“Hey.” His voice rubs against the silence like a fingertip brushing against the nap of velvet. She can smell Ed, and what she carries inside her threatens to burst from her. She drags her gaze to Daryl’s.I owe you.

He doesn’t speak. He is chewing at his lower lip, his fingers linked loosely together, his eyes hooded. But he shakes his head at her, a gentle, helpless movement, a substitute for words she cannot guess at. Her cheeks are warm and wet.

“Goodnight,” she whispers across the room, and crosses to Sophia’s bedroll, settling herself on the floor behind the girl, wrapping an arm around her waist. In her sleep, the child moans and finds Carol’s hand with hers. Beneath the window, Daryl shifts into a supine position, his pack clinking and rustling as he rests his head on it. The oppressive weight of Ed’s presence is lessened by Daryl’s, as she had hoped it might be. She need not spend the night in fear of waking to her husband’s touch, need not sleep lightly in order to watch over her child. For tonight, at least, she can rest.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

The air in the attic is stale and damp in the morning, yesterday’s humidity only slightly relieved by the night. She stirs with the awareness that someone else is already awake, and opens her eyes to look for Ed. He is asleep, his mouth wet and open. She is facing him across an expanse of floor, Sophia tucked against her back.

It takes her a moment to remember that Daryl is here too. Sitting up slowly, gritting her teeth against the pain in her side, she turns towards the window. He is standing with his back to her, but there is an alertness in his posture that tells her he has sensed her waking. Before she can speak, he glances at her, nodding a greeting, and leaves without shutting the door behind him. Fresher air from downstairs drifts into the room.He was waiting for me to wake before he left.

“Mama?” Sophia’s voice is hoarse with sleep, her eyes still closed as she reaches out a hand to find Carol’s leg.

“Morning, baby.” Carol strokes the hair off her cheek, gliding her thumb over a scratch—from a branch, maybe. The girl scrunches her nose and sighs, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand before opening them.

“Are we going to look for Carl and the others today?”

Carol wasn’t sure, until now, how much of yesterday’s conversation her daughter had processed. The girl’s expression shifts straight from sleepiness to anxiety.

“I don’t know,” Carol murmurs. “We’ll figure it out when everyone’s up.”

The pump in the yard squeaks faintly down below, and a moment later the front door rattles against the wall. Sophia gets up and goes to the window.

“Daryl’s bringing in the water,” she says. Her hair is dull gold against the morning sky, taking on a ruddy gleam as the first suggestion of sunshine reaches the window. On the other bedroll, Ed groans, and Carol tenses, getting to her feet quickly, ignoring her muscles’ protest as she crosses to her daughter.

“Let’s go down and see what we can make for breakfast,” she says quietly to the child. Sophia nods, her eyes darting to Ed, and slips her hand into Carol’s.

Daryl has brought two buckets of water into the kitchen and filled some bottles, which are clustered on the table. He is standing at the sink drinking from his canteen when they reach the doorway, and he screws the lid on before peering at them with odd shyness.

“Good morning,” Carol says, smiling, Sophia echoing her in a mumble. “Thanks for doing the water. I’ll make some coffee once I’ve got the stove going.”

“Laid the fire last night when I was gettin’ some bread.” He scratches the back of his head. Next to the woodstove is a stack of extra kindling.

“I could’ve done that this morning,” she says uncertainly, and he shrugs, turning away as though bored by the exchange.

“Gotta let her do what little she’s good at, else she ain’t worth havin’ around.” Ed’s voice reaches past her from the hallway, and Sophia jumps. Mother and daughter move further into the kitchen, and Ed follows them, his hair flattened on one side by sleep. He bends to kiss Sophia’s cheek. Carol keeps her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, and feels the quiver that passes through the girl as her father straightens up. Across the kitchen, Daryl is watching them expressionlessly. Ed addresses him, the fingers of one hand playing in Sophia’s hair.

“Me an’ my girls, we’ll be headin’ out later. Hopin’ to catch the resta them. You can tag along if you want. I’m sure you can find a way to pull your weight.”

Carol holds her breath, afraid to look at either man. Ed’s tone is patronising, even as he manages to make the invitation sound generous. She has seen him speak this way around men who intimidate him, finding subtle ways to belittle them and counting on no one being rude enough to call him out.

Daryl says nothing for a moment. Carol moves to the stove and takes up the matches, striking one to relieve the oppressive silence in the room. As the flames catch some old newspaper, she dares to glance at Daryl. His face is set in a cold mask, a muscle twitching in his jaw, and she is sure he is about to humiliate Ed. But then his eyes—ice blue, so very very angry—shift to Sophia, and to Carol herself, lingering on her as he replies to her husband.

“Sure.” His face is blank as he turns back to Ed. Ed grins. Carol drops the used match into the stove and shuts the door, closing her eyes for a second, offering a fervent, wordless prayer of thanks. Abruptly, Daryl walks to the kitchen doorway, and Ed jerks sideways to avoid him, as though afraid the younger man will hit him. But Daryl simply leaves, heading down the hallway towards the porch.

She makes oatmeal for breakfast, eyeing the remaining food stores in the pantry, calculating what it will be best to take with them. Sophia measures out brown sugar, and carefully slices apples to put on the cereal. Ed, drinking coffee at the kitchen table, watches them and lights a cigarette.

“Ed,” Carol says, her mind half on how much food they can fit in the Jeep. “Maybe not in the—”

“’Scuse me?” he says, tilting his head to one side. The spoon slows in the pot of oatmeal, her fingers squeezing and releasing the wooden handle.Stupid.

“Nothing. Sorry. Nothing, Ed.”

The stink of tobacco mingles with the woodsmoke and the smell of coffee, and Sophia clears her throat behind her hand, her eyes round and watering with the effort of not coughing. Carol hands her a mug of coffee.

“Daryl’s outside,” she tells the girl softly. “Will you take him his coffee, please?”

xxxx

The bruise on the woman’s face is purple this morning. Daryl stands at the collapsed section of porch railing and takes hold of one of the pieces, twisting and yanking until the nail keeping it in place falls out. Her husband is tall, taller than Daryl, taller even than Merle, broad shouldered and heavy. The wood is splintered at one end, sharp against the callused palm of Daryl’s hand as he cups it experimentally. When she came downstairs last night, before she came outside, she was limping, her feet brushing the boards in an uneven rhythm, and he knows why that is now. He lay last night in the stink of the attic and thought of her husband touching her, holding her with his huge hands—

The wood spins as he hurls it across the yard, the air in front of him splitting apart for a second. Someone’s breath catches just behind him. The girl. He turns to her, forgetting how much rage there must be in his face, and her chin wobbles. She is holding a mug of coffee, her knuckles white on the pale green porcelain.

“That for me?” he snaps, and she nods, but doesn’t give it to him. He remembers catching his father’s leftover fury after the old man had beaten his mother, remembers how it took his daddy a while to come down from the jittery, violent high of thrashing his wife. Sophia’s eyes are fixed on his belt; she is frozen in place. Pity squirms in his belly. She is as frightened here, reunited with her parents, as she was in that filthy basem*nt.

“I ain’t mad at you.” His voice is much softer this time. It requires exertion on his part, but it is also a relief, the twisting in his stomach easing. The girl doesn’t move. He crouches, his eyes level with hers. “Sophia? Can I call you that?”

The question is dumb enough to have its intended effect: she blinks, and her lips twitch towards a smile.

“Yes,” she whispers, and he thinks of her mother last night, the teasing in her voice when he said her name a second time.

“‘Kay. Sophia. Thanks for the coffee.” He waits, and a second later she holds out the mug. The back of his neck is sweating from the effort of acting like the kind of man who won’t terrify this kid.

“You’re welcome,” she whispers, but the end of the second word is lost in a sound from the kitchen, a jagged, gasping exclamation of pain that is followed by a second of silence. And then Ed’s voice, the hostility in it audible even though his words are not. Daryl jerks upright and takes a step forward, coffee splashing over the lip of his mug and onto the floorboards.

“Sophia.” Carol’s voice is unsteady. “Breakfast is ready.”

The girl hesitates. She is dressed in clean clothes, jeans and a brown T-shirt with a pink heart in the centre, and she wraps her hands in the hem of the shirt, stretching it. Daryl hears his own mother’s voice, remembers blood on a worn, yellowing pillow.

“C’mon,” he says roughly, and her footsteps cross the threshold behind his.

xxxx

They eat breakfast together at the kitchen table because they need to talk further about leaving. But for the first ten minutes, there is only the sound of their eating, the simmering tension between the men so obvious that Carol struggles to swallow each mouthful. The mark on her wrist where Ed held it against the stove plate burns and burns, air licking at it like a flame with each movement of her arm.

The men sit at opposite ends of the table, and Carol sits beside Sophia, who followed Daryl inside and immediately came and buried her face in Carol’s stomach, a quick, silent comfort. It is how Carol knows the child—and likely Daryl—heard what happened. Ed is relaxed, eating at a leisurely pace, smiling at his daughter until she smiles back obediently. Daryl lowers his face to the bowl and shovels food into his mouth. Despite the crudeness of his manners, he eats neatly: nothing goes to waste. When he is finished, he drinks his coffee in a single long gulp, and looks at Ed.

“We should head west,” he says. “Stay rural. Try find the group before the weather gets cold.” He glances at Carol. “An’ hope they’ve found shelter.”

“That’s what I was thinkin’,” Ed replies. Daryl leans back, rocking his chair onto two legs. There is an agitation to his movements that makes Carol want to soothe him, with words or a touch of her hand on his shoulder. Sophia peers at him worriedly. Rocking on chairs is not allowed in the Peletier home.

“Had a look at your car last night,” Daryl says to Ed. The older man’s face reddens slightly. “Seems the engine was flooded. Starts just fine now.”

Ed narrows his eyes, as though waiting for an accusation to follow the remark; but none comes. He turns to Carol and shoves his bowl towards her.

“You gonna get me some more or you jus’ gonna sit there gawpin’ while the men talk?”

She stands quickly, her hip bumping the table, and takes his bowl to the stove, scraping the last of the oatmeal into it. No one else will get seconds.

“I’m takin’ my bike,” Daryl says. “Be obliged if I can stash some stuff in your car.”

His chair squeaks and suddenly he is next to Carol, holding his empty bowl.

“I can make some more,” she says nervously, but he shakes his head.

“Had plenty. Jus’ gonna wash up.”

She ducks her head and sprinkles sugar on Ed’s portion. Daryl hesitates, and seems to stiffen, pulling himself up. When she glances at him, his eyes, cold and clear, are on the inside of her wrist, where a strip of raw skin glistens red. She turns her hand to hide it, and he moves to the sink, his spoon clattering as he tips it out and begins to wipe the bowl.

“We leave in an hour.” Ed belches quietly before continuing and accepts his oatmeal without comment. “How much fuel you got in that bike? Don’t need you getting’ stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

“Enough. I got enough.” The word is bitten off, and when Daryl turns from the basin, Carol’s heart sinks. “You wanna count my bolts too? Wanna check my bag when it’s packed?” There is danger in his voice, and his gaze is flinty as he crosses to the table and flattens his palms on it across from Ed. The larger man stares at him, and Carol goes to stand behind Sophia, taking the hand that reaches up for hers.Ready to run and hide.

“Hell, if we’re gonna travel together we gotta communicate, brother.” For the first time, Ed sounds uncertain instead of condescending. He is afraid, just like Carol, that the other man will leave them.

“Ain’t yourbrother,” Daryl spits, and his eyes shift to the woman and child, his face contorting into an expression that is as frustrated as it is furious. Carol looks back at him, tears springing to her eyes—for him, this time, for how little he wants to be here and for how hard he is trying to stay in spite of that. She opens her mouth to thank him, to risk the wrath of her husband; but Daryl is gone, his feet thumping up the stairs.

xxxx

Ed leaves her and Sophia to pack, and wanders out to their car to count the remaining MREs, none of which he shared with the rest of the group once they reached the farm. There aren’t many left, anyway—he liked to eat them at the quarry, watching the others pick at whatever canned goods they had. Carol sends Sophia into Beth’s room to look for clothes, and she goes in search of Hershel’s medical supplies.

The door to the old man’s room is closed, but she doesn’t think to knock, startling Daryl as she opens it. He is at the window, turning awkwardly to look at his stitches, his shirt bunched in one fist. He hisses a curse and yanks the shirt down when he sees her, flushing. In the second before he does, she gets an impression of a lean, muscled side, the colour uneven with something other than bruising.

“Ain’t you ever learnt to knock?” he spits.

“I’m sorry.” She hovers just over the threshold. “I was looking for Hershel’s med kit.” She looks at the wrinkles in his shirt where he was gripping it a moment ago. “Do you want me to check your stitches for you? It’s a, it’s a tricky spot for you to reach.”

“Nah.” He glares at her. “Seems like you got your own injuries you should be focusin’ on.” His eyes shift to her wrist, though the burn is out of sight.

“I burnt it on the stove,” she says immediately. “It’s nothing.”

She is used to seeing hatred directed at her. She thinks Ed might once have loved her, but everything he feels is ultimately distilled into loathing: love, desire, admiration, she has seen all of them warped inside him into disgust. But the hatred in Daryl’s face as she speaks the lie is worse, somehow, than Ed’s; deeper, older, and sprung from a hurt he cannot quite conceal. She doesn’t understand the look, but she knows she would rather be called every name under the sun than be subjected to it again.

He turns back to the window, his shoulders slumped suddenly. A cupboard door creaks across the hallway in Beth’s room.

“Med kit is on the dresser,” he says dully. She sees it then, a black case, unzipped and opened onto bandages and disinfectant. “Ain’t good for much except basic wound care.”

She goes to close the kit and stops with her hand on the zip.

“Are you—do you need some ointment or—a clean bandage?” Her fingers pinch the metal as she waits for him to lash out again. But he sighs heavily and doesn’t reply. She closes her eyes and speaks in a rush, before her courage fails her. “We have to help each other. There’s no one else now, Daryl. Not until we find them.”

Silence.

“Need a clean bandage,” he mutters at last. “Can’t f*ckin’ reach.”

She goes to the window, placing the scissors and bandage on the sill, holding a piece of cottonwool soaked in disinfectant between her fingers. He turns his head away from her as he lifts his shirt, and he lifts only the portion covering his wound. His hand shakes, a fine tremble that tugs at something inside her, and again she has the urge to calm him.

Beneath the grubby bandage applied by Hershel, the flesh is angry and red, but not, she can tell, with infection. Daryl has not rested and allowed it to heal since it happened, and it is inflamed by wear and tear. She smoothes the alcohol over his skin, and he tenses at the cold, his muscles tightening. His hipbone is sharp, shadows finding the hollows between his ribs.

“It must be sore,” she says, to try and relax him, and he grunts, his hand clenching on the fabric. The movement pulls his shirt forward, exposing another sliver of skin on his chest. Across it is a scar, long and faded, a deep wound that healed in a ridge across his ribs. She barely glimpses it before he yanks the shirt over it, the tendons in his neck taut, his face still turned away from hers.

His hand shakes again when she positions the bandage, her fingers holding it in place as she tapes it. His side is warm, but gooseflesh ripples across it as soon as she touches him, and he inhales sharply even though she is careful not to apply pressure to the stitches.

“Sorry,” she whispers. Her fingertips are light and quick, the trembling in his hand distressing to her now. He drops the shirt while her hand is still on the bandage, as though he has reached the limit of his patience for the process, and for a second her fingers are on his skin and the soft cotton of his shirt covers them. It is such innocent contact, such meaningless, fleeting intimacy. And yet he jerks his head around to stare at her, his expression wary, his eyes as frightened as though she had held a knife to his side. Her hand falls.

“I’ll pack this in the car,” she says, only because she does not want another strange silence to grow between them. He tilts his chin upwards, his mouth a grim line.

“Should sort that burn out first.”

“It’s—I get them often,” she says dismissively, as she might to Lori or Andrea, forgetting that he is not willingly complicit in the lie she told him. “Clumsy, you know?”

He picks up the roll of bandage and the scissors, holding them out to her. Flustered, she takes them and turns away.

“Ain’t ever seen you drop a single thing.” His voice is soft. “Never seen you bump anyone. Trip.” She looks down at the scissors, the silver blade melting as her eyes fill. He takes a long, slow breath. “Put somethin’ on the burn. You get an infection, we’re gonna need more than what’s in that kit.”

She nods, her eyes lowered, and he leaves, flinching to avoid brushing her arm with his as he passes her. She stands there for another moment, trying to understand what he wants from her. In the first year of her marriage to Ed, when the hitting began, the bruises and the sprained wrists, she learnt quickly that what people needed was for her to offer them comfortable explanations. A black eye is easier to look at if there is a funny story attached to it. A broken finger makes people uncomfortable without a mundane cause being revealed.I slammed it in the car door. I tripped on the rug and hit my cheek on the mantelpiece.She prides herself on being good at these stories after so many years, good at easing the difficulty of knowing her, and nothing has changed in that respect since the world ended.

But Daryl does not seem to want the mix of humour and self-deprecation which she is an expert at delivering.I’m so clumsy.Silly old me.Drives poor Ed bananas. This man, who has lived at the fringes of the group for weeks, seems nonetheless acutely aware of how things are between Carol and her husband, and resentful of her earlier lie to him. She wants to take him aside and explain how things must be: everyone has to pretend together, or else the ugliness of the reality will ruin everything. But she isn’t sure, thinking about it now, whether she has ever seen Daryl pretend, or accept a lie, or be anything but bluntly, uncomfortably honest.

xxxx

The bike is a relief, so much so that he forgets that the car behind him cannot follow at his pace, cannot weave through the abandoned cars on the highway but has to inch around them. He squints at the bright horizon and welcomes the wind in his hair, the snap of his leather jacket as he accelerates. Only when he is through the traffic jam does he glance back, and do a lazy U-turn to find the Jeep Cherokee.

Ed glares at him when he reaches them. They are almost through the cars, driving on the steeply cambered shoulder, the underside of the vehicle screeching on the uneven edge of the asphalt every time Ed turns the wheel slightly. In the passenger seat, Carol stares straight ahead, hands folded in her lap, and Sophia’s eyes are rimmed with red, her window open. She doesn’t meet Daryl’s gaze when he rolls up alongside the car, and an immense weariness descends on him.

“Nearly through,” he says to Ed, dodging a stringy corpse entangled in the wheels of a truck. The other man doesn’t reply, but guns the engine, the car bumping ahead of Daryl.Stupid asshole. He moves in front of them again, leading them to the open road.

They do not stop until lunchtime, at a gas station whose appearance is announced by a series of hand-painted boards along the road in the preceding mile.Fresh Peaches.Don’t Forget To Fill Up. Hot Coffee Ahead.A sweet, sickening stench rises from the wooden fruit stand beside the entrance to the forecourt, long-rotten peaches lining the boxes with a lumpy brown layer. Daryl stops in the shade next to the tiny store, and dismounts, walking to the treeline and pissing into the dirt at the base of a birch. The Jeep rumbles to a stop as he zips up his pants, and a walker lurches out of the shadows, a man in an Eraserhead T-shirt, stringy hair to his shoulders, one arm ending in a mess of splintered bone and dry, curling tendons. Daryl slips his knife from the sheath and stabs the walker in one eye, stepping nimbly away from its reaching hands as it falls.

“There gas left?” Ed asks as he gets out the car. Daryl shrugs, wiping his knife on a patch of weeds. Carol covers Sophia’s eyes when she sees the walker, and Daryl snorts at the futility of it.This is her world now, he wants to say.

“Ain’t checked yet,” he says to Ed instead, gesturing at the dead man. The woman and the girl head for the trees on the other side of the store, and he feels a flicker of alarm. “Hey, if you ain’t armed then don’t go wanderin’ about. Likely more where he came from.”

Ed glances at them, frowning at Carol.

“She needs to pee then lemme take her,” he says. “You ain’t gonna be able to protect her from sh*t.”

“Ed, she—she wants to be private.” There is a note of anxiety in the woman’s voice that keeps Daryl’s attention on their conversation. He cannot see Sophia, concealed by Ed’s bulk, nor most of Carol. But he does see the man reach forward for something, and he does hear Carol’s soft gasp.

“Isaid, I’ll take her. I’m her goddamn father.” His voice is loud, and his arm moves, minutely, doing something that makes Carol’s voice high and funny when she replies.

“Yes of course. Of course, Ed.”

The man and the girl disappear around the side of the store. Carol looks after them, cradling her burnt wrist in her other hand, and when Daryl moves towards her, the hot tar making a sticky sound beneath his boots, she turns to him with a desperate expression, her mouth opening and then closing tightly. He stops a couple of feet from her, frowning, and sees a shimmer in her eyes before she follows her husband and daughter into the trees. Daryl walks away from them all, to the roadside, reaching for his cigarettes, sick to death of them.

As he smokes and tries not to listen to the yelling behind him, the woman’s pleading voice, he thinks of his momma, a couple of months before she died, sending him to fetch frozen peas for her ankle. Swollen, mottled with blue and purple, the ankle had twisted as she fell during an argument with Daryl’s father. There were no peas in the freezer, only a tray containing three ice blocks, and Daryl, still shaken by the ruckus that had preceded his father’s departure from the house, took these to his mother and threw them onto the bed beside her.

“Why’d you have to make him mad?” he yelled at her. “Why’d you have to make him do that?”

He pointed not at her ankle, but at the split lip to which she was, ineffectually, holding a Kleenex. His mother said nothing about his accusation or the ice, but she looked more hurt by his words, in that moment, than she did by the cut on her face. That fury he felt at seven, he feels again now, not at his momma but at Carol.Why’d you have to make him mad why’d you have to—

The gravel scrapes softly, and Daryl turns, reaching for his knife. Sophia is standing there, her face flushed. Ed is still shouting down in the trees. Daryl is filled with shame, suddenly, greater even than he felt that day with his momma; shame that he is standing here smoking while this kid’s momma gets screamed at and worse. He scowls.

“Can I wait with you?” Her voice quavers. He remembers how much time she used to spend with Carl and Lori, away from her parents when they were alone, and his throat aches.

“Sure.” He wonders whether she understands the choice he has, and fights the urge to explain it, his guilt making him defensive.If I interfere it’ll only make it worse. There is silence from the woods for a moment, and then Ed’s voice again, quieter, and a few seconds of thin, animal keening that stops abruptly. Daryl drops his cigarette, nauseated by the sound, by the stink of rotten fruit, by his own inaction.If I fight him, I’ll have to kill him or else he’ll kill her.Do you understand that?But he says none of this to the girl, who moves to his side and stares down at the ground, her hair shining, the back of her neck skinny and freckled.Ain’t my problem.Ain’t my problem. Carol’s words from this morning come back to him, accompanied by a memory of her fingers stroking lightly over the bandage on his side:we have to help each other. There’s no one else now.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

She waits in the car with Sophia while Ed and Daryl go through the gas station store, even though she wants to stretch her legs. She keeps her hand as still as possible, but her little finger pulses loudly with her heartbeat, reducing everything else to background noise. Ed bent it backwards, slow and steady, until there was only the agony, until a sound blossomed from her determined silence. Then he left her alone, gagging, bent forward with her hand curled against her chest. The finger is not badly broken, she thinks. Not too crooked, and no bone has pierced the skin. She just needs to bind it.

Nothing Ed has done in the last few days is unusual. But the frequency of his tantrums and the accompanying violence has increased since the CDC. He is stressed, she tells herself, threatened by Daryl and angry at being unable to leave with the rest of the group. Once they find their rhythm on the road, once they (ifthey) find Rick and the others, things will improve. He will be curtailed by greater social pressure, at the very least. And Sophia will be safer around the others.

Carol rests her head against the back of her seat and tries to take deep breaths, to slow her heartrate so the pounding in her ears and chest will lessen. In the back, Sophia shifts restlessly, watching the doorway to the shop. There were no more walkers that Carol could see when she returned to the forecourt, her hand held to her chest, avoiding Daryl’s eyes. But the shop is small, and unlikely to offer them much that is useful.

Ed strides out with a fistful of Slim Jims, and a bag of Doritos under one arm. He tosses them through Sophia’s window and returns to the store without a word. Carol looks down at her finger, swollen stiff, and acid rises in her throat as she tries to move it. Lifting her eyes to the rearview mirror, she looks at Sophia; but the rush of renewed vigour she usually feels at the sight of her daughter doesn’t come.

“That’s it.” Ed opens his door and climbs in, chucking a can of antifreeze into her lap. There is no gas left in these pumps, but they will check the cars they pass along the road. She turns her face to the window. Daryl is straddling his bike, looking straight at her; but he turns away when their eyes meet, and she reaches back for her seatbelt. Ed starts the car and grins at Sophia in the mirror.

“You open up one of them Slim Jims now and share it with your momma, hear?” He turns out the gas station and back onto the road. In front of them, Daryl’s hair flies out behind him, his shoulders broad and steady against the wind. “An’ then pass one to me.”

They see only four abandoned vehicles in the next five hours, two of which are emptied of gas, the doors standing open, the interiors picked clean. The other two are parked side by side under a thin, bedraggled-looking tree at a picnic spot: a Toyota and a Chevy truck, the back loaded with furniture. The Jeep is going on fumes, and Carol assumes the bike isn’t doing much better. If these two don’t have any gas, they will need to go in search of some on foot.

As Ed pulls over, a hand appears against the window of the Chevy, followed by a face: that of a child, a little girl, her dark hair in two braids over her shoulders. The Peletiers stare at her in silence as she opens her mouth and bares her teeth at them, silver braces glinting through the smudged glass.

“Mama, is she…?”

“She’s dead,” Carol says softly. A movement startles both her and Ed, who curses. Daryl has parked his bike and is walking to the truck, yanking the door open, his knife in his hand. He stands so the passengers in the Jeep cannot see what he does, and, still with his back to them, he lifts the child out the cab and carries her towards the woods. Carol watches him, the thin legs draped over his arm, his head bent. The girl’s braids are tied with green ribbons, which flutter against Daryl’s arm as he walks.

It is ten minutes before he returns, dirt on his hands, his face shuttered. In that time, Carol has gone gingerly through the cab of the truck with her good hand, finding gum, a sketchpad and Sharpies, and a small magnetic chess set. The car and the truck have tanks half full of gas, Ed announces to Daryl, and under the coffee table, chairs, and small bookshelf stacked in the back of the truck is a cardboard box full of pantry staples: pasta, rice, canned viennas, a jar of olives. The car contains little: some lip balm, a pretty blue scarf that Carol tucks in her pocket, three tins of baby formula.

Daryl transfers the food to their Jeep, and siphons gas for both the car and his bike. Ed smokes, standing at the edge of the asphalt gazing up the road, and Carol seizes the opportunity to bind her finger. She asks Sophia to cut her a strip of bandage, because every movement of her hand makes her stomach churn. The girl has done it before, at home, and brings her a piece the right size as Carol crouches in the shade beside the car, her forehead against the hot metal.

“Do you need water, Mama?”

She shakes her head, her skin sticky.

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” she replies, and holds out a hand for the bandage. Sophia comes to stand next to her and watches her clamp one end of the fabric between her fingers, winding it around the injured one and its companion. When the bandage is tight, she lifts her hand for Sophia to tie it off. The girl secures it, steps closer to her mother and hugs her, Carol’s cheek against her bony chest.

“It’s okay,” Sophia whispers.

Carol squeezes her eyes shut and breathes through clenched teeth. When she can speak, she rests a hand against her daughter’s back and murmurs, “I know, baby. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

xxxx

His fear that they are not following the same route that Rick and the group took seems confirmed by the strip mall where they stop for the night. It has been looted, but not recently. On the outskirts of a shabby town, the mall faces onto a parking lot where a handful of walkers lurch aimlessly between vehicles. Daryl is reluctant to stop at a place this size, but when he pulled over at a house a way back, Ed shook his head and drove on until they reach the strip mall.

Daryl dispatches the walkers alone, trying to remember as he does so whether he has ever actually seen Ed put down a walker. Hands grimy with blood, a red splatter from one particularly energetic corpse across his face, Daryl ignores the older man when he finally exits the Jeep as the last body falls. The shop doors are standing open, which doesn’t suggest either safety or much left to take, but Daryl’s immediate priority is putting some distance between Ed and himself, so he strides to the far end to start checking them. A hair and nail salon, a Chinese takeout, a shoe shop, a dry cleaner, a dance studio, a jewellery store, and a print and copy centre, the floor covered in spilt black ink. Standard small-town stores.

Daryl keeps half an eye on Carol and Sophia as he peers into the shoe shop. Ed has disappeared into Mr Foo’s Chinese Takeout, and the woman and the girl are waiting at the car, Carol’s eyes shifting nervously between Ed and Daryl, waiting for permission from one of them. Daryl jerks his head at her.

“Should see if they got shoes that fit you,” he says. The flimsy slip-ons she wears are badly worn and difficult to run in. She looks at him in surprise, and he scowls. “You comin’ or what?”

The three of them enter the shoe shop, Daryl in front. Through the dust and gloom, he can see the shelves have been picked over, but the floor is a jumbled mess of sandals and boots and slippers, as though the place were looted hurriedly rather than thoroughly.

“Need somethin’ sturdier than those,” he mutters, flicking his fingers at Carol’s feet. Sophia sticks close to her mother’s side. Ducking behind the counter, Daryl makes sure the tiny storeroom is clear, and starts to search for socks. His are threadbare, full of holes and so long unwashed that there is mould growing on them in dark patches.

As he flips through the pile of socks near the counter, he watches Carol out of the corner of his eye. There is a bandage on her hand, the tip of her little finger discoloured, and she holds the hand close to her body when she doesn’t need it. Her face is drawn and tired, with an exhaustion he recognises as being the result of pain rather than exertion. She glances his way and he looks down, fingering the thick wool of a pair of black socks. The light in the store darkens, Ed’s silhouette looming in the doorway.

“Look what I found.” He lifts his hands, each one clutching a bottle of white wine. “Turned that damn Chinese place upside down but I knew they’d have somethin’.”

“Find any food?” Daryl asks. He is jealous of the wine; the thought of drinking himself unconscious is appealing. Ed shrugs.

“That ain’t my field of expertise. The wife takes care of that.”

Carol stands up, as though heading immediately to the takeout place, and for a second she stands in front of Ed, dwarfed by his bulk. Daryl’s mouth is dry, his blood heating, his skin scratchy and sensitive. He stares at the bend of her elbow jutting to the side as she cradles her injured hand.

“She needs boots,” he says. “Winter’s comin’, an’ besides, she can’t run for sh*t in those.”

“Can’t run for sh*t anyway.” Ed guffaws and uses the bottom of one wine bottle to poke Carol in the shoulder. “Go on then.”

In Ed’s presence, the store feels crowded. Daryl’s skin prickles and burns. He finds two pairs of socks in the right size and looks at Sophia, who peers back at him, crouched beside a pile of Havaianas.

“You wanna come look for food?”

Her eyes widen, her gaze sliding from him to Carol and finally to Ed, who shrugs. Daryl flushes, unsure why he made the invitation. He is about to retract it when Carol speaks to the girl.

“That’s a good idea. You go with Daryl, sweetheart.”

She glances at Daryl, her eyes dark with misery and weariness, and dips her chin in thanks. He’s done nothing; taken her kid off her hands for ten minutes, maybe. Left her alone with her husband again. He moves towards the door and Ed steps out of his way, tousling the girl’s hair as she passes him, his second bottle of wine tucked under one arm.

The Chinese takeout is three doors down, a narrow shopfront sandwiched between the dry cleaner and the hair and nail salon. The combined scents of cleaning chemicals, acetone, and a spilt plastic gallon jug of soy sauce are pungent. Red paper lanterns with gold characters on them hang from the ceiling, and a huge decal of a noodle bowl on the front window is peeling at the edges. Daryl dodges the dark, sticky stain on the tiles, and heads for the kitchen. There are shelves behind the counter, containing a row of miniature lucky cats, alongside white-and-blue bowls, ornate cups edged with gold, and small metal teapots with bent bamboo handles. Sophia pauses at the cats as Daryl pushes open the swing door to the kitchen, and he looks back.

“Stay behind the counter, an’ come into the kitchen if you hear anythin’,” he tells her. “Anythin’.”

She nods gravely, her eyes flicking to the plump porcelain cats with their upraised front paws, and he leaves her to it.

The kitchen is a mess, and at least some of the chaos is fresh—the result of Ed’s search for alcohol. The freezer is open, the floor around it littered with packs of prawn and crab meat, identifiable only by the bright pictures on the labels and a hint of their original smell in the stench rising from them. Daryl avoids the packs and their grey, liquefied contents, and goes to the gas stove. A stack of woks stands on the front plate, the sides streaked with wear, the metal smooth, and he hefts one in his hand, wondering if it’s worth taking. It seems a good pan for cooking in quantity; but now there are only four of them to feed.

He puts the wok back on the pile and turns his attention to the row of bottles against the wall. Sesame oil, vegetable oil, soy sauce, chili sauce. He doesn’t know how well the latter two will have survived without refrigeration, but he gathers them up, along with the oils, looking around for something to put them in.

The cupboards next to the freezer open to reveal the remnants of the store’s canned ingredients: bamboo shoots, exotic mushrooms, lychees, and a small box containing sachets of five spice and packs of Ramen. A bag of white rice with a hole in one corner has dribbled grains onto the dusty vinyl of the shelf, and when he peers at it more closely, he can see weevils among the grains. In the recesses of the bottom shelf is a box holding two cans of chicken stock in bright blue and yellow packaging, and he hauls the container out triumphantly, shoving the other food into it.

“It’s got bugs in it.”

He starts, banging his head on the top of the cupboard as he rears back and turns to look the girl.

“Jesus. Make a bit of noise next time so I hear you comin’,” he mutters, rubbing the back of his head. She bites her lip.

“Sorry.” Her voice is a whisper. In one hand, she is holding a little white lucky cat. He glances at it and then down at the rice.

“Yeah, it’s got bugs in it.” He sighs, hesitating. A childhood of deprivation and the thought of winter approaching makes him reluctant to waste anything. But they can only carry so much. He takes the rice out the box and sees relief in the girl’s face. “Bugs can stay here,” he says. “But later on we might wish we’d taken that.”

She scrunches her nose in ladylike disgust, and he snorts.

“C’mon. Let’s figure out where we’re gonna sleep tonight.”

On the other side of the dry cleaner—which offers nothing of use and nowhere suitable for sleeping—is Jewel of the Nile, whose front window advertises piercings (“buy one get one free”) and jewellery valuations. The store is somewhere between the fancy city jewellers and the mall stores Daryl has seen selling cheap earrings in endless variety. There are racks of costume jewellery, but the walls are lined with cases containing pricier offerings. One whole stretch of cases is smashed open and emptied, glass glittering on the blue velvet, only a couple of dropped rings and a tangled gold bracelet left. But the other wall’s cases, though broken open, are still full of jewellery: necklaces draped over rich fabric, velvet cushions studded with rings. There is little of use, but Sophia peers curiously in the door as they pass on their way to look at the dance studio, so Daryl takes her inside, figuring there’s no reason not to. Truth be told, he gets a kick out of walking into places like this, where he would have been side-eyed by security before the virus started.

Ed and Carol find them there. Her feet are now encased in a pair of leather boots, her capri pants hanging over the tops. Daryl nods approvingly as he meets her eye. Ed puts his wine bottles down on the end of the counter and goes to where Sophia is fingering sets of dangly rhinestone earrings.

“You’re too young for flashy stuff like that.” He slings a heavy arm around her shoulders, and she drops her hand to her side. “Still Daddy’s baby girl, ain’t you?”

There is silence. Carol steps towards them and glass crunches under the soles of her boots.

“Ain’t you?” Ed’s voice is chilly as he repeats the question.

“Yes, Daddy,” the girl replies meekly. Carol laughs, a strained chuckle.

“She’s twelve already, Ed, she’s…”

Ed turns to look at his wife, hauling his daughter with him, and Carol trails off, her face pale. Sophia stares at the floor. At the back of the store, Daryl watches, trapped where he is, paralysed by an old, familiar dread.

“You, though,” Ed says slowly. His hand curls around Sophia’s shoulder, squeezing it as he addresses Carol. “You’re plenty old enough for this flashy crap.”

The woman says nothing, and her eyes do not leave her husband’s face. Daryl has an instinctive urge to crawl into the space under the counter and hide. Carol’s injured hand rests between her breasts.

“Need to find a place to sleep,” Daryl says hoarsely, trying to divert them from whatever is about to play out. Ed waves a hand at him dismissively, without even turning.

“No no no. Got a chance to treat my wife, I’m gonna take it.” His arm slides off Sophia’s shoulders, and he pats her bottom before walking towards the woman. Sophia jerks away from the touch, and Daryl rocks on his feet, trying to puzzle out the flicker of revulsion he feels at the man’s gesture.Daddy’s little girl.

Ed stops in front of Carol and looks her up and down, one hand scratching his balls.

“Like to act like you’re somethin’ special, doncha,” he says thoughtfully. “Like you know everythin’. Like aqueen. You a queen, Carol?”

She shakes her head, her pupils wide and dark. Ed pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face. Her throat is long and white.

“Hey now.” The words burst from Daryl involuntarily, against his better judgement. Quick as lightning, her gaze touches his, and in it is a warning. Ed ignores him, waggling her head until she looks back at him.

“Ed—” HIs name is a mere breath in her mouth, but it encompasses pleading and apology and desperation. Daryl’s fingers graze the handle of his knife.

“Sophia,” Ed snaps. The girl jumps.

“Yes Daddy?”

“Bring your mama some jewels. Let’s make her look like the queen she f*ckin’ thinks she is.”

“We’re wastin’ time.” Daryl thumps the toe of one boot into the bottom of the counter as he speaks. Along with his lingering revulsion, there is fear, and beneath it all the fury he has felt since he and Sophia returned to the farm, a current of it running through his joints and muscles and marrow.

“This is family business, Dixon.” Ed half-turns. “You got a problem with that? You think mywifehas a problem with that?” He focuses on Carol again. “You got an issue with me wantin’ to spoil you?”

“No.” Her voice is clear and firm. Against her chest, her healthy fingers twitch. “No, Ed.”

He nods. He doesn’t bother looking at Daryl again. Carol does, though, as Ed’s attention shifts to Sophia. The woman’s expression is stiff, but she shakes her head, once, her eyes dropping to his knife and back to his face.Don’t.Daryl cannot stand to hold her gaze, to look at those bandaged fingers and her bruised face, to accept her urgent insistence that he do nothing.

Ed has taken Sophia over to the trays of jewellery, gripping her arm.

“Choose,” he says. After a moment, she lifts a bracelet from the velvet, red gemstones flashing as her hand trembles. The chain is slender and elegant, even to Daryl’s eye. Ed shakes his head.

“Nah. This.” He releases his daughter and picks up a thick, ropey silver necklace, heavy and long, and tosses it at Carol. She bends to pick it up and he plucks a second piece from the case in front of him, a gold link choker, little more, really, than a fancy dog collar. “And this.”

He does not stop there. Manhandling Sophia with him, he strolls the length of the cases, taking out signet rings and endlessly looping chains, thick strands with ornate pendants and bangles inlaid with gems, so many that eventually the muscles in Carol’s arms shiver with each new addition. She does not speak once. All she does is pick up whatever Ed throws at her and put it on, fumbling a little with her wounded hand, until her chest looks plated with textured metal, and her throat is in the grasp of a stack of chokers. Daryl watches because he cannot look away. Because he wants her to meet his eyes again, this time with permission, so he can vault over the counter and strangle her husband with one of the bulky, ugly chains in a heap at his feet.

But she doesn’t look at Daryl once. When Ed tires of the game, he walks to the rack where Sophia was browsing and chooses a pair of earrings: a waterfall of fine, dazzling silver chains to hang from each ear. Carol takes out and pockets her studs as soon as she sees him approach the rack, and she is waiting when he flicks the card at her, ready to crouch and take it up. She slides the hooks into her earlobes with her eyes lowered. The clustered chains swing beneath her jaw. Ed watches her, grinning.

“Show us your jewels, your majesty,” he sneers, and Carol lifts her face, holds out her arms, and looks back at him blankly. Whatever he intended here has backfired; this much is clear to Daryl. She looks magnificent, bedecked in all that shining stuff. It has not dwarfed her or humiliated her. It has brought into focus something about her, a poise, a power Daryl doesn’t know how to name. Her skin is luminous in the fading light, and her eyes are the same silver as the earrings, and she looks to him like a warrior queen, armoured in gemstones and chain mail. Her severe haircut, he notices for the first time, accentuates the shape of her head, the strength of her neck. For a moment, he is transfixed by her.

“Lipstick on a goddamn pig.” But Ed’s grin is gone. He sees what Daryl does, senses that he has made himself foolish instead of her. He goes to stand in front of his wife. “Queen of the whor*s, that’s what you are. Say it.”

“I’m the queen of the whor*s,” she says softly. Daryl bites the inside of his cheek and swallows the blood that spills onto his tongue. Sophia has become almost invisible, standing silent and motionless in the shadows. Ed lifts a hand and Daryl shoves a bottle of jewellery cleaning solution off the counter, startling them all.

“We done here?” he says loudly. Ed drops his hand. Daryl’s legs feel weak and unsteady as he walks around the counter and towards the door. When he reaches the couple, he stops and stares at Ed. Carol is breathing long and slow, bracelets hissing and rattling as she lowers her arms. “Huh, Peletier? You finished with yourfamilybusiness?”

Ed holds his gaze for a moment, narrowing his eyes, and then turns to Carol.

“Take that sh*t off and make us dinner.” He pushes past Daryl and picks up his wine, stomping out the door. Carol sways on her feet, her head dropping as her hands come up to unfasten the chokers, and Daryl moves away. But her fingers slip on the catches, her injury getting in the way.

“Please take them off?”

He doesn’t know whether she means him or the girl, who hasn’t moved from deeper in the store; but he cannot ignore the request. Carol flinches as his fingers brush hers, and he withdraws instantly. But she lets her hands fall so he can undo the chokers without touching her, and, slowly, he brings his hands back to the first catch.

He is used to doing fine work, fletching crossbow bolts and making fishing lures to sell. But this is different, the proximity of it, her skin and hair and the soft cotton of her top. A knot of fear and anger makes his fingers clumsy, his breath puffing from his nose in audible bursts. The curve of her neck, the creamy skin under which he can see the blue of veins, are unbearable to him, the ghosting of his fingertips across her nape intimate in a way that makes him want to break something, or, for one frantic second, to hurt her. The urge sickens him, and when the last choker is unfastened, he turns and walks out into the evening, away from the mother and child, ignoring the clink of silver and gold under his feet as he leaves.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Someone camped in the dance studio before them and left the exercise mats stacked into two “beds”, granola bar wrappers littering the floor between them, an empty water bottle lying against the mirrored wall. It is the cleanest part of the strip mall, offering nothing of interest to looters. But Carol dislikes being trapped in the mirror, her reflection mimicking her every movement, her discoloured face and scabbed mouth staring back at her each time she lifts her head. Their party is multiplied, imitators lurking in the glass. Two Eds sit back-to-back, gulping wine from the bottle. Behind Sophia, another little girl crouches with her back to everyone, drawing listlessly in a sketchpad.

Daryl is nearby, but he does not join them in the studio until dinner is ready—a cold mixture out of cans, viennas, bamboo shoots, and beans. There may be gas left in the takeout joint’s stove, but Carol is too afraid to go and check by herself, and she will not ask Daryl, smoking at the far edge of the carpark, to accompany her. Ed is halfway drunk, more of a liability than a help. So she opens cans and tries to make the mixture look appealing, and they eat it out of the pretty porcelain bowls she had the wherewithal to take from the restaurant on her way to the studio.

Daryl shows up as they start to eat, Ed leaning against the mirror, Carol and Sophia cross-legged on a pile of mats. He has cleaned the walker blood off his hands and face, and he sits down on the floor without looking at any of the Peletiers. Ed is eating slowly, every mouthful chased by a swallow of wine.

“I’ll take first watch.” Daryl scoops a heap of meat and vegetables into his mouth. Carol looks nervously at Ed, who will soon be passed out and unlikely to wake up for anything.

“I’ll take the second one,” she says. “Ed’s been driving all day.”

Her husband grunts in agreement. Daryl looks up from his bowl, an incredulous expression on his face. She flushes.

“I’ll wake you if something happens. If someone comes. I’m quite capable of being lookout.”

Daryl studies her for a second, and then shrugs and continues eating. He doesn’t speak again until he is finished his meal, muttering his thanks to her. Taking up his crossbow, he heads into the dark outside. He closes the studio door behind him, but she can see him through the glass, sitting on the kerb lighting a cigarette, his shoulders hunched.

She doesn’t bother cleaning their bowls; they’re running low already on bottled water, and they won’t be staying here longer than tonight. She puts them with the empty cans in a far corner of the studio. Sophia helps her stack more mats so there are four sleeping spots, evenly spaced along the mirrored wall. She moves Daryl’s pack to one of them, with a blanket out the Jeep. The pack is heavy, the canvas worn and patched in places with crooked, rudimentary stitching. She runs a fingertip over the coarse thread, inexplicably moved by the thought of him frowning over the task, and then she drops the bag abruptly and goes to see to Sophia.

Ed stumbles outside for a piss as Carol tucks her daughter in, and by the time she has kissed Sophia, he is face down on his bed. When he starts to snore, Sophia relaxes, reaching for Carol’s hand, and her mother strokes a lock of hair off her forehead, fingering the fine strands. When Sophia was little, there used to be quiet conversations at bedtime, endless earnest questions as she tried to understand her father’s behaviour towards her mother.Daddy gets very stressed. Daddy doesn’t mean it. Daddy doesn’t like mistakes.Nowadays, there is nothing left to say, no excuse left to give, no lie through which Sophia cannot see. She doesn’t ask why anymore, or say she wants to live at her friends’ houses, or pore over Carol’s bruises as though they were a map to the fault in her family.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” Carol whispers. Sophia sighs, rubbing her cheek against her mother’s knuckles, and her breathing deepens, her face softening.

Carol should sleep too, but first she needs to talk to Daryl, who seemed more shaken by what happened in the jewellery store than she was herself. She bore the insult, the humiliation, for only as long as she wore the jewellery, let the shame slide off her with those tangled chains. She left it there, in that glittering, glass-carpeted place. Her broken finger is enough to carry with her into tomorrow; if she holds onto the weight of what happened in the store, she will not be able to get up and function in the morning.

Daryl turns sharply when she opens the door, his eyes grey in the darkness, one hand going for his knife. She waits a moment before going to sit beside him on the kerb, leaving a generous space between them. His cigarette is almost smoked down, the end burning close to his fingertips, burnishing them in its tiny glow. Chewed nails lined with dirt, and callused skin. She lifts a hand to the back of her neck self-consciously. His touch was as light as Sophia’s when he undid the chokers, despite his clumsiness; barely a touch at all, really.

“They sleepin’?” He stares across the carpark as he asks and takes one last drag before dropping the cigarette butt.

“Yeah.” She wraps her arms around her knees, her heels resting on the edge of the kerb. Her bruised ribs twinge. She ignores them. “Wine puts Ed right to sleep.”

Daryl takes another cigarette out and jams it between his lips, offering her the pack with one hand as he digs for his lighter with the other. His hair slips forward, his eyes on the asphalt as he pulls the lighter out his back pocket.

“No thank you,” she says. She hasn’t smoked since high school, not since she met Ed. Daryl puts away the pack and flicks the lighter, cupping his hand around the cigarette. Light seams his fingers for a second, slides down his wrists. His hair has some red in it, gleaming auburn near the flame.

“I’m sorry about earlier.” She tries to sound confident and sincere. “Ed, uh, he’s having a…a hard time at the moment.”

Daryl leans an elbow on one knee and inhales, squinting at the sky as he breathes out a stream of smoke.

“‘Minds me of my old man,” he says after a moment. His voice is rough and low, textured somehow differently in the darkness, and she shivers.

“Your father?”

He nods, and picks at a hangnail on his thumb.

“I’m sorry.” It is the most revealing thing she has ever said to him, this acknowledgement that living with a man like Ed makes for a difficult life. She thinks of the scar on Daryl’s ribs, and frowns, rejecting the thought. He is the kind of man who used to get into fights, probably: bar fights with knives and broken bottles. He doesn’t reply. Against her knee, her fractured finger is hot and swollen, the edges of the bandage chafing. “And I’m—I’m sorry you had to be involved in—in that,” she says. “Earlier. I’ll try to, uh, to—to—”

He looks at her, and there is an anger in his face which she is not expecting, his upper lip curling. She gazes back at him, her mouth unsteady, the words stopped by a lump in her throat.

“Why’d you—” He pauses, a spasm crossing his face, and looks away from her, across the carpark. “I coulda…done somethin’.”

She shakes her head. “No. No, you shouldn’t—no. Please.” Water drips onto her wrist and she realises that she is crying, though her voice is clear and insistent.

Daryl stands up in a fluid, startling movement, and walks a few paces, turning back to look at her. The moon is behind him; he is a patch of deeper darkness against the sky, his face invisible to her. Looking up at him, she is aware suddenly of his size and strength, the way the muscles of his arms bulge, the breadth of his hands.

“Please,” she repeats, more quietly.Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t go.She doesn’t know which she means more. “If you—I just need to, to manage him better. I haven’t been…when Sophia went missing, I couldn’t—” She hesitates. “I can handle him.”

Daryl scuffs the sole of one boot on the asphalt, sending fine gravel spraying towards her, a fragment hitting the tough leather of her new boots. She doesn’t move. The next time he lifts the cigarette to his mouth, his face is filled with disgust in its light, and he inhales and exhales sharply before dropping the stick and grinding it out.

“The hell do you want from me?” he asks. “You want me to be a—you want me to watch? Give him a goddamn audience?”

“No, I—”

“You think I’m some dumbass redneck who doesn’t give a sh*t about anythin’?” The words are vicious. “Or maybe you think I enjoy it? That it?”

She shakes her head quickly. Her fear of Ed, after all these years, usually heightens her senses, giving her a strange clarity when he loses his temper, so she can predict and try to forestall violence. The fear she feels now, by contrast, has made her mind sluggish and uncooperative. She struggles to keep up with Daryl’s words while also watching his movements, waiting for the slap or the kick towards which he is building. She should stand up so it is easier to shield herself, but she cannot make her muscles work, so all she does is hold her injured fingers against her chest, covering it with her other hand. Daryl’s eyes flick to it and his mouth twists.

“I don’t think that,” she whispers.

“Then what the f*ck do you want from me?” he repeats, spitting the words at her. Dimly, she is aware of fresh tears on her face.

“Help us find the group,” she says, her breath hiccuping. “Or—or another group. People we can stay with.” She closes her eyes. “Please don’t leave me and Sophia alone with him. I swear that’s all, that’s—if you fight him, it’ll make everything worse.”

When she opens her eyes, he is staring down at her, his face obscured by shadows.

“He has a gun.” She forces herself to keep looking at Daryl, so he can see she is telling the truth. “A revolver. He keeps it in the car but when we camped, it stayed in the tent with us.” She swallows, remembers the cool silk of the barrel against her cheek, her inner thigh. “You shouldn’t, uh, you shouldn’t antagonise him. I can handle him. I can.”

Daryl steps forward and crouches in front of her, near enough that she can smell the sweat and tobacco on his skin, near enough that when she jerks backwards her foot shifts forward for balance and bumps his. He reaches out and pushes her good hand out the way, taking the injured one by the wrist. He uses his thumb and forefinger to encircle her arm, and she goes automatically limp, the effortless power in that grasp terrifying to her.

“This youhandlin’him?” His voice scrapes across her skin as he looks down at her bound fingers. Her face is burning. But his fingers are warm and dry, and despite the length of them, the thickness, there is a gentleness in the hold that is somehow harder to accept than the violence she has been anticipating. When he lifts his eyes, his face has changed; he looks stricken, unsure of himself.

“Yes,” she says, sagging. Her voice is empty, the immensity of her exhaustion pushing all the feeling out of it: years of exhaustion, of resignation, of studying a man for whom she feels nothing but fear. “This is me managing him.” She smiles in a grotesque imitation of pride. “No broken skin, I can still use my hand, no danger of infection, easy to find a cover story.” She looks down. The fingers holding her forearm twitch, and Daryl lowers his arm, her wrist still in his grasp. The back of her hand rests on his palm now, white skin against brown. “And Sophia didn’t see,” she finishes in a whisper. “Because you were there to stay with her. Protect her.” She blinks, blinded for a second, mucous running over her top lip. “You don’t owe me anything. I oweyou. But I’m asking this of you. Just for a little longer.” Thepleasethat follows is soundless, pathetic. Daryl opens his fingers, but she doesn’t take her hand out of his immediately.

“That’s it?” he says hoarsely. “To babysit your kid while that asshole—”

She nods, withdrawing her hand slowly from his. He doesn’t need to know precisely what she fears for her daughter. He stares at his empty palm.

“I can handle him,” she repeats firmly. Daryl’s fingers curl shut, his hand a fist at his side as he gets to his feet. She stands up too, stiffly, and suddenly they are toe to toe, her head bowed and his chest a breath away from her forehead. The heat of his body is astonishing to her, the smell of him sharp and gamey. Neither of them moves. She realises, gradually, that she is no longer afraid of this man who saved her daughter, who carries a fury like her husband’s but has hands as gentle as a child’s. Somewhere in the course of their conversation, she has stopped believing he might hurt her.

xxxx

They hit the road at dawn. Carol makes coffee on the stove in the takeout place, her eyes shadowed from the hours she did on watch. Ed is pale and irritable, drinking two cups of coffee and refusing the oatmeal they eat for breakfast. As Daryl rides, he wonders what is being said in the Peletiers’ car. He cannot stop thinking of Carol’s hand resting in his, breathtakingly delicate. He could have crushed it with his fingers, snapped her wrist with ease. Her skin was soft, the veins in her wrist fine, the tip of her broken finger red and swollen.

They are passing through farmland again, plots dotted with houses more rundown than the Greene place; small family farms like the ones near Daryl’s hometown. Sometimes he sees walkers in the distance, clustered around something in a field or wandering up a driveway. The road is mostly clear. They pass a green tractor on the verge, its paint still shiny and new, and at the edge of a patch of forest are three kids’ bicycles, chained to a section of fence. The chain is rusted, the bikes filthy, their owners lost forever in the trees.

The four of them stop at lunchtime long enough to eat and pee. There is no sign of the rest of the group; no sign of other living humans at all. No smoke from the houses, no sound of other vehicles. Again, Daryl doubts his advice that they come this way. What if Rick took the others back towards the city? What if they went no further than the farm next door to Hershel’s?

Mid-afternoon, driving through forest, he crosses a bridge over a river, and turns into the next side road, the Jeep Cherokee bumping along behind him over the dirt. His hunch pays off. At the end of the track is a clearing, a small cabin in the centre with an overgrown garden patch behind it. On one edge of the plot is the river, widening into a rocky pool before it disappears into the trees. Daryl stops the bike and dismounts as Ed pulls up.

“Still got hours of daylight,” Ed says. In the seat beside him, Carol glances at Daryl, her gaze dropping when he looks back at her.

“We’re runnin’ low on water. Good place to stop and boil some more for the bottles.” Daryl jerks his head towards the river. “Ain’t got a map for what’s ahead. Should take the chance while we got it.”

“We could wash properly, Ed. And I can do some laundry.” Carol’s voice is gentle. Ed glances at her and moves one meaty hand from the steering wheel to her thigh, squeezing it as Daryl watches through the window.

“Fine,” the older man says. Carol keeps her eyes lowered, and Daryl shifts his gaze from the hand on her leg to Sophia in the backseat. The girl looks as close to excited as he has ever seen her.

“Mama, can I swim?” she asks breathlessly. Carol looks over her shoulder and smiles at her child’s anticipation. Daryl turns away, aware of Ed’s hand moving on his wife’s thigh, aware that the smile on the burly man's face has nothing to do with the river.

The cabin is unusable, the door swinging loose on one hinge, the interior bare and dirty—the kind of place that was abandoned before the world ended. Behind it, a rusted fence encloses the overgrown vegetable patch. There are some herbs left, he hears Carol tell Sophia—basil, mint, the hardier ones that grow quickly—but nothing else they can eat. The sun picks out the silver in her hair as she stands at the fence with the girl. It reminds Daryl of the necklaces she wore yesterday.Queen of the whor*s.There is a sour taste in his mouth which neither the cold river water nor the bitterness of nicotine will displace.

They decide to sleep in tents in the clearing. The cabin does not offer better security or conditions than the outdoors, except a solid roof which they do not need in this weather. Daryl is grateful at the prospect of some solitude, a place in which he can separate himself from the Peletiers, however token the gesture might be. Their tents face each other across a ring of stones Carol lays for a fire, which she lights straight away so she can start boiling water.

Awkward in the knowledge that his presence will likely keep the woman and the girl from washing in the river, Daryl tells them he is going to sleep a while in his tent and zips himself inside. It is stuffy and hot, but as much as he would prefer to head into the forest and hunt, he is not confident Ed can fight off any walkers that might wander into their camp. Sighing, he closes his eyes and unbuttons the top button of his shirt, sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat and in his bellybutton, and tries to sleep. He smells Ed’s tobacco after a time, hears Carol and Sophia’s voices, the way their bodies break the rush of the river with splashes. He tries not to imagine Ed watching his wife and daughter bathe. Tries not to feel like a creep simply for being so near while it is happening.

That night in the clearing is the first night Sophia comes to Daryl. They eat around a small fire, more of the canned viennas mixed with noodles and flavoured with fresh basil, and they agree Daryl will take first watch, followed by Ed. The family is oddly peaceful today, Ed telling a long story over dinner about the last major deal he made at work, Sophia leaning her head against Carol’s arm sleepily in the firelight. But the woman, however serene, is also withdrawn—withdrawn specifically fromDaryl, avoiding his eyes and speaking to him only when necessary. She pets her child’s hair and laughs at Ed’s story, and not once does she look at their companion. It is disorienting, a reminder that he is still an outsider, a temporary companion while they search for better ones.

He walks the treeline for the first twenty minutes of his watch, his crossbow on his back, his eyes squinting through the darkness. There is movement in the Peletiers’ tent as the family settles down, followed by murmuring. He tries to listen to the forest, but each time Carol speaks, her words inaudible, he strains to hear them instead. And then, as he sits down on a log as far from the tent as he can get, the front flap is unzipped halfway and Sophia comes out.

She has a blanket around her shoulders, and her hair is the colour of brass in the moonlight, tousled from her pillow. She walks to his tent and stops. Frowning with concern, he gives a low whistle to show her where he is, and stands up as she comes to him.

“Whassa matter?” he asks. She looks at the middle of his chest.

“Mama told me to come sit with you.”

He looks past her, towards her parents’ tent, his blood running cold, and he takes an involuntary step forward.Is he hurting her? he wants to ask. He makes himself swallow the words and focus for a second on the child.

“You wanna sleep in my tent for a bit? Better than sittin’ out here.”

She shakes her head, her gaze slipping to the ground. He looks again at the tent, hears Ed’s voice, Carol’s. One of his hands caresses the leather sheath at his waist, his palm resting for a second against the handle of his knife.

“I’d rather sit with you.”

He drags his attention back to the girl, and shrugs irritably.

“Sure. Whatever.” He points at the log. “Sittin’ here for now.”

She lowers herself onto one end, wrapped in her blanket, and pokes at the dirt with the toe of her sneaker. He is pleased to see she is sleeping in shoes, ready to run if necessary, but he is too distracted to say so. He moves nearer to the tents, and nearer again, and stops a few metres from them, his fingers drumming the handle of his knife. There is movement in the Peletiers’ tent, rustling. A grunting exhalation from Ed. Carol’s breath catching as he grunts again.

Daryl turns, nearly tripping, his face hot as he walks back to Sophia, his hands restless on his knife and the strap of his crossbow. He sits down heavily a foot away from the child, his breathing hoarse and quick.Idiot, he thinks.f*ckin’idiot.The sound of Carol’s inhale plays again and again in his head. Was it borne of pleasure or pain, that breath? Or something else, something Daryl wouldn’t understand because he does not know what it is like to f*ck a woman like Carol?

He and Sophia sit on the log in silence, unwilling companions, and listen to the sound of Ed groaning and grunting, the sound of frogs from the river and an owl somewhere in the trees, eventually the sound of flesh against flesh in a loud staccato rhythm. An hour passes, maybe more. Daryl remembers, vaguely, how often Sophia used to sleep over in the Grimes' tent with Carl. Sometimes the clearing is silent, sometimes there is only Ed’s voice, saying God knows what.Is he hurting her?Daryl remembers her uneven step behind him at the farm, the reek of sex in the attic. The fire sinks to embers and goes cold. Carol gives a soft cry, and both the man and child flinch, Daryl half-rising.I can handle him. If there is a mark on her in the morning, he thinks—if there is a fresh bruise or a broken bone—he will cut Ed’s throat. As he sinks back onto the log, he allows himself to imagine it, the veil of blood spilling over the blade of his knife. He shakes his head to break the fantasy and finds Sophia watching him. Her eyes are dull, with more than the lateness of the hour, and he is unprepared for the sharp stab of sympathy he feels for her.

“You swim earlier?” he asks at random, hoping she will get the same look she had in the car. But she only nods, looking down at her feet. Ed’s voice in the tent is fierce and insistent. Carol is silent.Hit her, Daryl thinks,an’ I’ll rip that f*ckin’ thing in half.

“I saw a fish,” Sophia says softly. Her hair hides her profile from him, and he squints at her bony shoulders under the blanket, the back of her skinny neck.

“Big or small?” he asks. She shrugs. “Mean, could we have eaten him?”

“He was small, I guess.” She peers at him. “Too small to eat.”

He grunts, and she continues.

“I’ve never caught a fish. I don’t know how.”

Daryl shakes his head. “Bet you know goddamnmathformulas though.” He glances at her, her eyes murky blue, the tiny freckles across her nose darker in this light. Her brow creases. “Useless sh*t they taught you at school. Capital cities an’ ocean currents. Lookit us now.” He waves a hand at the camp in front of them. “Shoulda taught you how to hunt an’ fish an’—an’—”

“Put down walkers?” she says, and he stares at her in surprise.

“Well, yeah. Exactly.”

For a second, they almost smile at each other. But Ed’s noises from the tent grow louder, and Sophia shrinks in her blanket. Daryl flounders for something to say to distract her—and himself—from the rhythmic grunting across the clearing.

“Could teach you myself.”

She looks at him doubtfully, and he is annoyed by the doubt, by the implication that he doesn’t mean what he says.

“If you want.” He sniffs, and scowls at her. “Gotta learn some time if you wanna make it in this world.”

Her expression clears, and there is a flicker in her eyes of something almost like her excitement over the river, there and gone so fast that he isn’t sure he saw it at all.

“Yes please,” she whispers, and hesitates, her gaze drifting back to the tents. “If I’m allowed.”

Daryl is about to reply when the tent flaps open. Ed ducks out and straightens up. He is shirtless, his pants open. He yawns, and grins at Daryl. He has a barrel chest, flabby and white. Daryl thinks of Carol’s slender fingers, the way she wouldn’t look at him all day.

“C’mon,” Ed says to Sophia, who stands up quickly, swaying on her feet as she does so. From inside the tent there is no sound and no movement. Ed walks a little way and pisses into the trees, urine splattering loudly on stones and leaves. He gives a sharp inhale as he begins, and then hums tunelessly, cheerfully. By the time Sophia reaches the tent, he is stuffing himself back into his pants and doing them up. Daryl wants, with a need that makes him strain forward, to hear Carol’s voice or see her, to know that she is okay.I can handle him.

Ed pauses at the opening to the tent and looks over at Daryl, still smiling. Daryl stares back at him. He is behaving like a child. This man is her husband, and whatever they do in private is none of his business. Theirf*ckingis none of his business. He sees his mother’s face for a moment in the gloom behind Ed, hears her gasping breaths and the rattle of his parents’ bed.

“Night,” says Ed, lifting his chin in a gesture that seems somehow triumphant. Daryl doesn’t reply. He doesn’t notice until the tent flaps close that he has drawn his knife and is holding it against his leg, his fingers slippery on the handle, the tip of the blade winking in the moonlight.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

She rises in the pre-dawn dark, unzipping the tent as quietly as possible, taking her blanket and a razor with her. Ed is sitting on a stump nearby, keeping watch half asleep. When she emerges, he gets up and pushes past her into the tent, zipping it shut behind him. Grateful for the privacy, she goes to the bank of the river. There is a thick mist over the water, wisps drifting upwards into the branches of the overhanging trees.

She undresses slowly, putting her clothes on a rock that juts from the bank into the water. She will rinse them out once she has washed herself. Her skin tightens in the cold, her nipples mauve, pebbling in the damp air. Her body doesn’t feel like her own. She spent the hours in the car yesterday seducing Ed, admiring him, reminding him of better days. Today, she will do the same, walking a dangerous tightrope between modesty and the pretence of desire, stroking his ego so that instead of hitting her, he will use her in other ways. But alone in the river, her body will be her own again. Leaving her blanket on the shore, she enters the water with the blunt razor in one hand.

The cold steals her breath, the river like ice against her calves, the fog clinging to her thighs. She stifles a gasp, her heart beating so quickly that it seems to vibrate in her chest. The coarse river sand slopes downwards, deepening into a pool, though the current lessens only slightly in the deeper water. As she descends, she bends her knees to lower herself more quickly into the cold, until she is standing at the deepest point, only her head and shoulders above the surface. The current strokes from her spine to her shoulder-blades, wraps its hands around her waist as it reaches past her. Her breasts break the surface, bobbing, her skin milk white where it is unmarked by bites or bruises.

For a moment she stands and allows the river to explore her, to wash a thin layer of sand over her feet where they are planted on the riverbed, to rise into her, warmed by her body. But Ed will not wash away without effort, and so after a time she ducks under the water, scooping up a handful of sand. She uses it to scrub her skin, her arms and breasts and belly, her neck and back. She rubs it between her legs, ignoring the hurt, holding herself open to rinse away both the sand and whatever is left on her, inside her, of her husband. She breathes the fog as she scrubs and scrubs, watching her skin flush, feeling her lungs turn to ice.

He has left no marks where Daryl will see them. Every bruise, every scratch and cut, will be hidden by her clothes, and the places he hurt the most are hidden within her. He was mad last night when he found she hadn’t shaved—he hates hair under her arms, between her legs and on her thighs. When she is clean, when her wounds are open and stinging, she runs the razor over her mound, doing her best to leave it smooth, knowing it won’t be good enough.Say it. He repeated the words over and over last night.Say it. The blunt blade catches on her skin, a second of warmth as blood drifts from the cut and is lost in the current.

She moves to shallower water to shave her armpits, sitting cross-legged on the sandy slope, the water coursing below her breasts. There is something liberating about being naked out here, alone for a few minutes. Yesterday afternoon in the water, she focused on standing between Sophia and Ed, shielding the child from his gaze as she washed. This morning, while everyone else sleeps, she watches gooseflesh rise on her breasts, touches a finger to her stiff nipples. The fog is sinking into the water little by little, layers lifting off like smoke as the mist thickens near the surface. It will be dawn soon.

She holds the razor in her injured hand first, lifting her other arm and bending it over her head, turning to focus on the soft fluff that has grown in the days since Sophia went missing. There is only water to slick the blade as she glides it over the hair, and she works slowly, wanting to avoid another cut and to prolong her bath. A bird is calling from within the trees, a flute-like song that warns her the world is waking up.

xxxx

He kept watch until after midnight, when he woke Ed to take over. The older man sleeps like the dead, and Daryl’s voice disturbed both Sophia and Carol as he tried to rouse Ed through the canvas of the tent—he heard the girl mumble anxiously, and her mother reassure her. Crawling into his own tent moments later, he lay awake listening for Carol’s voice in case she spoke again.Go back to sleep, baby, it’s okay. Impossible to tell anything about her state from those words alone. But after he was sure from the silence that she was asleep once more, he turned onto his side, curling up like a child, and let them ease him into sleep.

He is awake too early, after only a few hours. The tent is lightless; dawn is an hour away at least, and he doesn’t know what has woken him. He rolls onto his back and folds his arms behind his head, listening. The very first bird is awake somewhere—a wood thrush, its song carrying clearly through the still air, interwoven with the murmur of the river.

He will not sleep again. His bladder is full, and he needs to wash, not having swum in the river yesterday. Wearily, he sits up, opening his tent and crawling out. The Peletiers’ shelter is closed and silent, and when Daryl stands up, he looks around for Ed, who should be on watch. There is no sign of him along the treeline. Frowning, Daryl moves away from the camp, towards the water.

The thinning fog is not enough to conceal from him the marks on her back. He can see only the upper part of it, the sharp shoulder-blades, bones pushing at her skin. The scars are what he notices first, before he has even understood who she is, what she is doing: stripes like the ones on his own back, and the unmistakable pucker of cigarette burns. He stands frozen in place, staring at the damaged tissue, and slowly he sees more: the tilt of her nose in profile, her parted lips, the elegant bend of her arm as she raises it over her head. Water trickles from her elbow down her upper arm, and he can see the tan lines of her tank top, the way the freckles across her shoulders lighten on the skin beneath her clothes. Her hair is sleek with water, and she is holding something in her injured hand, doing something. He rocks back on his feet, a twig cracking under his weight, and she turns her head. For the briefest second, he glimpses the swell of her breast, its soft white skin.

She folds her arms across her chest, her eyes wide and dark as she stares back at him, scooting deeper into the water until all but her head is hidden. He is dumbstruck, and to his mortification he is also aroused, his co*ck straining against his jeans, his mouth dry. She faces him.

“I’m sorry.” Her whisper is almost muffled by the mist, but the water carries it to him. “I should have been quicker.”

Her body is a confusion of images in his head, the marks on her back, the burns he can feel in the layers of his own skin, the hollow of her armpit and that suggestion of her breast, herskin, the way her ear curves and the way her mouth looks, her lips wet with river water. He cannot address any of this in words, and so he turns and leaves, half running into the trees. He keeps going until he is sure he is alone, and then he stops beneath a tree and opens his pants, pulling his co*ck out. The head is purple, shiny with precum, and he only has to stroke himself twice to come, harder than he has for years, one forearm against the trunk, his head resting on it as he groans. His hips jerk, his shaft twitching in his grasp. For a moment, he thinks of Ed, understands the man in a way that horrifies him. If he could, he would have her too, like an animal on the riverbank, her knees in the sand.

The brief pleasure of his org*sm vanishes as soon as he is spent. He kicks leaves over the puddle of sem*n he has left in the dirt, and zips himself up, sinking into a crouch with his back against a nearby tree, lighting a cigarette absently. He doesn’t understand the force of his response to the woman. He spent weeks with the group without evenstartingto get hard other than on the odd morning when he woke up. And Carol isn’t even—she isn’t—

He tips his head back against the rough trunk behind him and closes his eyes. The line of her shoulders hovers before him, the curve of her skull, the languid droop of her fingers above her head. She isn’t Andrea or Lori, but not because she isn’t beautiful. It’s just that she isn’t the kind of woman Daryl could ever hope to have, whether for a one-night stand or something else. She ismorethan he is, than those other women are. Her body is made of some finer, rarer material, those delicate bones and luminous eyes, the thoughtless grace in her movements. She is untouchable to someone like Daryl. The knowledge is bitter. He takes a drag on his cigarette.

Easier, then, in some awful way, to think about the marks of her abuse, though doing so makes his stomach cramp and shiver, makes him acutely aware of his own scars. Some of the marks looked old; but the cigarette burns down her spine looked fresh, a week old at most, the skin still red and inflamed. He squirms, bark digging into his back.I can handle him. The lie makes him briefly furious. But to her, he knows, it is not a lie. It is the compromise she has made with herself to survive.

There is a rustle behind him, a moan that slides into a hiss. He pulls his knife as he gets to his feet, spinning and planting it in the walker’s forehead with a violence that buries it to the hilt in bone and brain. Blood spatters his hand, and he yanks the blade free, kicking the corpse backwards as he does. It is a man, thickset and dark-haired, who bears a passing resemblance to Ed, and Daryl aims another kick at his side, flipping his knife into a more comfortable hold. But he stops himself before he stabs a second time, afraid of what that would mean, the need to destroy the body of a man already dead.

He walks parallel to where he knows the cabin is, towards the sound of water, and finds a stretch of river. It is narrower than the section past the clearing, rockier and shallower, but private. The sun is rising, the fog burnt away by the first brightness through the trees, and he looks around nervously before he takes off his clothes. Leaving his belt and his knife with his boots on the bank, he carries the rest into the water and soaks and wrings them out as he shivers, waist high in the current. When he has rubbed away the worst of the dirt, he tosses the wet bundle onto a rock and plunges back into the water, going under this time, scraping his fingers through his hair and scrubbing roughly at his balls. He does not think of Carol, of what the water hid from him of her body, of how black and afraid her eyes were when she twisted to look at him.

xxxx

She doesn’t move for minutes after he has left. She crouches in the water, her arms across her breasts, the surface skimming her shoulders, and she waits. When she is sure he isn’t coming back, she scrambles out the water and wraps herself in her blanket, shivering, kneeling on the bank to wash her clothes in the shallows. The light in the clearing fades to grey as she works. Under the blanket, water runs down her chest, beading on her nipples, trickling to her thighs and down into the sand. Her muscles ache with the cold and with the memory of Ed’s body on hers.

The surface of the river is streaked with the white of the first sunbeams by the time she is finished. She gets up slowly, holding the blanket closed around her body with her wet clothes against her chest. Ed is snoring, but Sophia will be awake soon. Carol must dress in dry clothes and start a fire, make coffee and breakfast.

Daryl appears at the treeline as she reaches her tent. He is wearing wet jeans, a wet shirt, his hair pushed back in a spiky tangle. The cotton of his shirt clings to his chest, every muscle defined by it. She does not look any further down, her face hot. She can imagine what he saw when he found her in the river, can imagine what he thinks of her—broken and ugly, a plaything for her husband. She was as quiet as she could be last night, but Ed was not, and the knowledge of what Daryl must have heard makes her lower her eyes.

“Sorry,” he says forcefully. “‘Bout before.”

She peers at him. She did not expect an apology when the fault was hers.Queen of the whor*s, bathing naked in a river for anyone to see. Daryl’s face is red, his hands tugging at his shirt restlessly.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says quietly, and tries to mean it. She is not like the other women in the group, the ones who count for something, against whom any injury is a crime. She is already ruined, already used up. What does it matter that Daryl has seen her shame? He knows it already.

He frowns and takes a step closer to where she stands. She lowers her eyes once more, her fingers tightening on the blanket. There is silence.

“You good?” he says at last, and his voice is soft, so soft, and her eyes sting. Because she would have liked, for a little longer, to keep the worst secrets of her marriage from him. She would have liked to pretend a little longer that she was something more than she is. It is vanity, and it is laughable that she should feel it at all.

“I’m fine.” Her voice is hoarse, and he is in front of her in three strides, smelling of the river. Even now, in soggy clothes, he exudes a warmth she can sense through the blanket. His eyes search her face, trace her jaw and her fading bruises, a crease between his brows.

“I am,” she insists. Her voice wobbles, and she presses her lips together. Daryl looks down at her.

“When you ain’t,” he says roughly. “You tell me.”

She says nothing, her eyes on the base of his throat where the skin is deeply tanned, a golden vee at the neck of his shirt.

“Please.” He swallows after he says it, and she watches his Adam’s apple slide up and down. She understands what he is asking, what he is offering, and she knows that what he heard last night prompted it. It is more than anyone has ever offered her, and he makes it sound like she would be doing him a favour to accept.

“Mama?”

She turns quickly towards the tent.

“I’m right here, Soph.” She clears her throat. “Coming.”

Daryl shifts on his feet. “Carol.”

Her hand is already on the tent flap, but she stops, wishing he would say her name again in his self-conscious way. Ed is moving, moaning as he starts to wake. She glances at Daryl and nods.Okay. She does not miss the way he sags with relief at her reply, the way his hand shakes as he lifts it to push his hair back.

xxxx

His clothes dry on the road, a warm breeze whipping through his shirt, his eyes going every few minutes to his rearview mirror. Behind the dirt-streaked windshield, he cannot see what is happening in the Jeep, and he has to wait until midday to ascertain what mood everyone is in. At breakfast, Ed was grumpy and tired, Carol moving endlessly from tent to car to river getting ready to leave. Sophia, though, smiled at Daryl as he slurped thin oatmeal from a tin mug—a small, spontaneous smile which seemed to shock her as much as it did him. He was so startled that he simply jerked his chin in response, and she blushed, not looking at him again before they left the cabin.

At midday they are on the outskirts of another town, which was clearly in the throes of gentrification when the virus began to spread. TheWelcome to Hollowaysign that greets them is relatively new, the colours fresh, and the Main Street boasts a Popeyes and a Dunkin’ Donuts in among the family grocer, the post office, and the hardware store with faded gold lettering on its window. The breeze has turned into wind, and trash tumbles in the gutters, shreds of paper and plastic bags, banknotes that flutter from a broken cash register on a street corner. Leaves skitter out the way of the bike; autumn is on its way.

Daryl finds the town’s only gas station, the pumps ancient, the bell on door to the tiny store jangling in the wind. Beyond it, down a short slope, is a housing development, brand new rows of identical homes, half of them, at least, with For Sale signs planted in their dead front lawns. Standing on the low wall at the edge of the gas station forecourt, waiting for the Jeep, Daryl counts them. Sixteen. There are cars in the driveways of some, open front doors, and broken windows.

The Jeep rolls to a standstill at the entrance to the garage, and Ed gets out, slamming his door.

“Out of f*ckin’ gas,” he calls across the forecourt, and glares at Daryl. “Tried to signal to you a way back.”

Daryl walks over to the car and shrugs. “Shoulda pulled over. I woulda come back.”

“Wasn’t sure I’d get the damn thing to start again. Been drivin’ on fumes.”

Carol and Sophia climb out the car, and Ed scowls at them before walking towards the store, lighting a cigarette. Across the street, through the window of a thrift store, a walker stares at them, her white hair still set in neat curls, a strand of pearls looped around her withered neck. Sophia looks back at her, frowning anxiously, and Carol gives Daryl a tight smile.

“Do you think there’s gas left here?” she asks. Her eyes slide past him to Ed, and Daryl looks her over, searching for signs that her husband has hurt her in the car. “Daryl?”

He shifts his gaze from her hands to her face. She looks, for a moment, so tired that his arms stiffen, beginning to lift—to catch her, to hold her up. But then he blinks, and her face is blank.

“Gas?” he echoes. “Dunno.” She nods, looking at Ed again. “Could be some in the cars if there ain’t in the pumps.” He gestures towards the housing development. “Down there.”

Ed’s footsteps approach. He passes them and goes to Sophia, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her against his side, murmuring something to her. Carol straightens up, tension in her neck and jaw. From an alleyway beside the antique store, a pair of walkers stumbles, both teenagers, a tall, red-haired boy and a girl with a high blonde ponytail. She wears a cheerleader’s uniform, and the flesh of one half of her face is missing, her eye bloodshot in its bony socket. Sophia gives a squeak of fright, and Ed picks her up, cigarette in his mouth, clasping her against his chest.

Daryl is halfway across the road, knife in hand, when he sees the others coming: more high-schoolers, two cheerleaders, their uniforms stained and torn, and three boys. Their sneakers are brand names, and the blonde girl wears a sparkly bracelet on one wrist. They are the popular kids, Daryl thinks as he prepares to meet them, the ones who wouldn’t spend a minute longer in this town than they needed to.

He sinks his knife into the temple of the blonde girl, wrenching it out in time to stab the red-head in one eye. The group of five behind them is more of a problem, and he backs up a little, wanting to lead them away from the gas station, from the Peletiers. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Ed and Sophia, but there is no sign of Carol.Get in the f*ckin’ car, he thinks.And lock the doors.

The walkers reach him as his back hits a trashcan, the lid rattling and the stink of rotten food enveloping him for a second. He kicks the first walker backwards, a skinny boy with acne who topples into the girl behind him, both of them falling. Daryl turns his attention to the others as a hand closes on his shoulder, a mouth full of perfect teeth opening inches from his face. He stabs without aiming, slashes the girl’s cheek and then stabs again as blood sprays onto his face, this time getting her in the temple. But he cannot push her off him; her body is sandwiched between him and the two walkers behind her, and Daryl is caught between them and the trash can, the rim digging into his lower back. He jabs blindly over the dead girl’s shoulder, his feet starting to slip under the collective weight of the walkers. The pimply kid and his friend are staggering to their feet, growling.

“Hey! Hey! Over here!” Carol’s voice, loud and desperate, comes from somewhere out of sight, back in the direction from which the walkers came. Daryl panics, struggling to heave the girl off him as the dead behind her turn towards the new sound. As they lurch away, he shoves the girl to the side at last and runs at one of them, stabbing him in the back of the head. The corpse’s skull is fresh, blood soaking the thick, shiny hair, the bone reluctant to yield the knife. Daryl slams a boot down on its face and works the blade free, but by the time he has managed, the last three walkers have almost reached Carol, who is standing holding Daryl’s crossbow on the sidewalk.

“sh*t.” The asphalt is slippery with blood. Daryl lifts his knife to throw it, but Carol is too close to the walkers, who sway and duck unpredictably as they move faster towards her, and Daryl does not trust himself not to hit her instead. He runs, shoving his knife back into the sheath, lifting his hands. He is too winded to yell, but she is watching him—trustinghim—and when he is close enough, she throws the crossbow, gritting her teeth with the effort, hoisting it over the first walker as it tackles her.

Sophia is screaming across the road, Ed’s voice telling her loudly to be quiet, and the wind is a steady moan between the buildings. But all Daryl hears is the sound of Carol hitting the sidewalk, breath bursting from her lungs, the grunt of fright she gives as the three walkers descend on her. He fires at a boy whose dreadlocked head is nowhere near Carol’s, and lifts the bow to fire at the other boy, hesitating the way heneverdoes, his fear of hitting Carol overriding his instincts. Her booted feet thrash, trying to kick the dead off her as they snap and snarl, and he drops the bow and throws himself on them, seizing them by the backs of their necks, hauling at them. He is yelling,get off her get off you f*ckers, and they twist in his grasp, unbalancing him. He releases them as he falls, pulling out his knife, lifting it so the blade slices through the soft palate of the first mouth open above him. He shoves the corpse of a girl off himself, ready for the final walker, and he is already swinging his knife arm when he realises the person bent over him is Carol, her face white with terror and streaked with blood and dirt.

Daryl pushes himself up and scrambles backwards, away from her. She has a crossbow bolt in her hand, pulled from the head of the walker he shot, and she has used it to kill a handsome, green-eyed boy in a letter jacket. But all Daryl can think is that he nearly stabbed her. That she summoned five of the dead to herself armed with nothing but a crossbow she doesn’t know how to use.

“Dumbbitch,” he hisses, getting to his feet, searching her arms for scratch marks, bite marks. She flinches, and he spits onto the chest of the one of the dead boys. “You tryna get yourself killed? The hell you think you’re doin’?” He is in her face now, his fear transmuting into rage, the thought of her, bitten, blaring again and again in his head like a siren. He waves his knife, the blade singing in the air an inch from her cheek, and her eyes well up. “Stay in the f*ckin’ car next time, you hear me? Uselessf*ckin’bitch.”

He draws breath to continue, but there is another voice beside them,Mama, the girl sobbing as she flings her arms around the woman’s waist. The bolt clatters to the sidewalk, and Carol turns away from Daryl, burying her face in her daughter’s hair. Beside the car, across the street, Ed stands watching, his hands in his pockets.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

The woman in the antique store is clawing at the window and thumping against the glass with beringed fists. When Ed calls look out, that is what Carol sees first, past the sprawl of bodies (I killed that one) and over Sophia’s head. And then she sees the walkers, drifting from behind stores and out of alleyways, staggering down the middle of Main Street, summoned by the ruckus. Daryl is panting at her side, covered in blood, his words still in her ears. Dumb bitch. Useless f*ckin’ bitch.

“Walkers,” she breathes, and bends to lift Sophia. Her ribs ache. Daryl follows her gaze, scanning the corpses approaching them, and gestures towards the Jeep with the knife he just waved in her face.

“We can make it to the houses. Grab your sh*t.” His voice is harsh, and he doesn’t meet her eyes.

Ed is already hauling their bags out the car when she reaches him, and they turn towards the far end of the gas station forecourt, where Daryl is grabbing his pack off the bike. His crossbow, two of the bolts dark with blood, is on his shoulder, and he hops over the low wall without looking back at the Peletiers, skidding down the gravelled, weedy slope towards the housing development below.

Sophia’s breath whimpers in her ear as Carol follows him, Ed moving ahead of his wife and daughter. The gradient of the slope makes it hard for her to stay upright with Sophia in her arms, and halfway down Carol finds herself sliding, her butt scraping over stones and tufts of grass, Sophia yelping in fright. As the slope flattens out, Carol lifts her daughter off her lap and scrambles to her feet, taking Sophia’s hand.

“Here.” Daryl grasps Carol’s arm, yanking her towards the second row of houses from the back of the development, pushing her ahead of him. She sees Ed holding open the door of a house, his face red with exertion.

“Run,” she gasps to Sophia, and looks behind her. Daryl has gone back a little way, and is facing the walkers, who are tumbling one by one down the slope from the gas station, greying limbs jostling the stones as they fall. Daryl stabs a couple as they try to rise, an Asian girl with a sleek black bob and a bright pink T-shirt, a man whose arms are covered in tattoos. Carol glances in the direction she sent her daughter. Ed and Sophia are inside the house.

“Daryl!”

He turns at her voice, and when he sees that the others are safe, he runs to join her. Carol heads along the pristine paved road, past a driveway full of abandoned belongings, past a deep green swimming pool, and ducks into the chosen house just ahead of him. Daryl slams the door, and goes to Ed, pointing down the hallway.

“Check the back door an’ block it,” he says, the words bitten off unevenly as he tries to catch his breath. Without waiting to see if the other man obeys, Daryl begins to push one of the bland beige couches in the living room towards the front door. Carol helps once she realises what he is doing, the upholstery coarse and scratchy against her sticky palms. A squealing sound comes from the other end of the house, something heavy pushed across a tiled floor, and Ed returns a moment later, scowling, his chest heaving.

“Moved the butcher’s block against it,” he says. “Weighed more than me.”

Something thuds against the front door, startling all of them except Daryl, who moves to the window and draws the blind as the leering, filmy-eyed face of an old man appears at the glass. Quickly, Carol goes through the ground floor of the house, dropping the kitchen blind and drawing the curtains in the downstairs bedroom. The bathroom has a frosted glass window, and when she reaches it, she has calmed down enough to realise that the room is bare: there is no soap, no towel, no evidence that anyone has ever lived here.

“It’s a show house,” she says when she returns to the living room. The furnishings are nondescript, neat and neutral in shade, white linen on the bed and plastic fruit in a bowl in the kitchen. The cupboards, she knows without checking, will be empty. Daryl nods, shrugging off his crossbow and pack. Sophia sits in a dove grey armchair, stiff and silent, and Carol goes to her. There is blood in the child’s hair, the fine strands matted into dark clumps.

“Did you get hurt, sweetheart?” Carol asks, crouching, her heart in her throat at the sight of the blood. Sophia shakes her head.

“‘S from you.” Daryl is frowning at the floor, dropping the loose bolts he’s been carrying in one hand. “Walker blood.” Dumb bitch. She looks down at her shirt. It is stained and filthy, the skin of her arms speckled with the same flaking brown crust as Daryl’s. Shuddering, she glances over at Ed.

“Did you manage to bring any of the water inside?”

“Depends what’s in your damn bag, doesn’ it.” He takes a step towards her. “You gonna thank me for haulin’ your crap—an’ hers—” he gestures at his daughter “—in here with a horde on my heels?”

She stares at him and tries to muster the right meekness of tone.

“Yes of course. Sorry, Ed. Thank you.”

Daryl snorts, and she flushes as her husband turns to the other man, a mean smile on his face.

“She’s a f*ckin’ liability. Seen it for yourself now.” He turns back to Carol and in doing so misses what she sees: the look of pure hatred on Daryl’s face as he raises his eyes from the ground, the way his face contorts as he takes a step towards Ed. The older man is on his way to Carol, however, and his arm is raised before he reaches her, his open hand smacking her across the face so that she stumbles backwards, her arms coming up to shield herself from further blows.

“You piece of sh*t!” Daryl is yelling, and though she hears a fist hitting flesh, there is no burst of agony in her side or her stomach or her face. Only the grunting of her husband, the whine of Daryl’s next breath. “She saved my life, motherf*cker. She saved my goddamn life.”

His voice cracks on the last word, breaking into a higher register, and something inside her yearns towards him the way her body used to yearn towards Sophia when she cried at night as a baby. Lowering her arms, she looks straight into Daryl’s eyes. He is gripping Ed by the throat, his teeth clenched and his knuckles red as he gazes at her. Her husband’s nose is bleeding, a thin trickle that drips into his open mouth as he wheezes in Daryl’s grasp. The younger man’s face is filled with rage and misery, and as Carol straightens up, he drags his eyes from hers to Ed’s, walking him backwards until his shoulders hit the wall.

Carol is at Daryl’s side as his elbow jerks back, his fist level with Ed’s jaw, and her hands close on Daryl’s bicep. The moaning of the dead outside the house, the sighing of the wind, are like the murmur of water in her head, a cool, steady current that splits around fragments of rock. Dumb bitch. She saved my life. His skin is hot and gummy under her palms, and he whips his head around as soon as she touches him, his pupils huge and dark, his mouth open as though to speak. But he says nothing.

“Don’t,” she begs. “Please.” She can taste salt and metal in her mouth, a cut on the inside of her cheek where her teeth caught the skin as Ed struck her. Daryl’s muscles quiver beneath her fingers, his fist tightening as he pulls his elbow back further, his breath coming faster as he glances between her and Ed. Her husband’s nose is still leaking blood, and he is sweating with fear, drops beaded on his forehead.

“Daryl,” she whispers. The younger man looks at her one last time, his face desperate, and then he slams Ed back against the wall and releases him. Carol lets go of his arm and grabs Ed’s as her husband doubles over, gasping, rubbing at his throat. Without a word, Daryl seizes his pack and crossbow, goes into the downstairs bedroom, and bangs the door behind him.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Ed,” Carol says, hovering beside her husband. He wipes the blood from his nose with his wrist and straightens up. He looks shaken, but he does not hit her, not yet, not again, and she touches his shoulder tentatively. “Come and sit down.”

Sophia is crouched behind the armchair, hiding, owl-eyed and shaking. She stands up as Carol goes to their bags, digging until she finds a water bottle in hers. Wetting a clean corner of her shirt, she goes back to Ed and uses it to wipe his face gently. He stares up at her through narrowed eyes, one hand reaching for the exposed skin of her side as she cleans away the blood. He strokes his thumb over her hip, and for a second, she feels all the places in her body that hurt, as though his touch has lit them up.

“Crazy redneck,” he mutters. His fingertips slide beneath the waistband of her pants, where her ass starts to swell, and he presses his nails into the skin. She lets her shirt fall and stands very still. “Look at me,” Ed says softly, so she lifts her eyes. His face is hard. “Clean yourself up and figure out some food. We ain’t gonna get outta here today.”

xxxx

The bed in the downstairs room is pristine, perfectly made with linen the colour of fresh snow, the lamp centred on the nightstand. He is too dirty for the bed, so he flings his things in a corner and lies down on the rug, his knees bent, running his fingers through his hair as he stares at the ceiling light: some modern metal thing which he imagines Andrea would love. There are voices from the living room, but they are quiet, mingling with the sound of walkers at the walls.

His fingertips tingle, and he rubs them against his scalp to take away the sensation. He can feel Ed’s throat in his hand, soft flesh over flimsy cartilage, so easy to crush. He wants to kill the man, which he has never wanted to do before, not really, not even to his father; he wants to watch Ed’s lips turn blue as he fights for air, watch the blood vessels burst in his eyes. Even that would not be enough to counterweigh the scars on Carol’s back, the sound of Ed’s palm against her cheek.

He slides his hands out his hair and over his face, shutting his eyes as he thinks of the walkers he fought, the way she called them to her. He has fought Merle’s buddies when they were high on crack and willing to rip him to pieces with their teeth. He has fought Shane, fought another burly cop armed with a baton once outside a bar in his hometown, knocking the asshole out, leaving with two broken ribs. He has fought his own father, equally afraid of being killed and of hurting the man. But he has never felt the terror he felt earlier as the walkers turned from him to Carol, the fear that drained him of sense and strength, of any faith in his instincts. Useless f*ckin’ bitch. His throat aches. He is no better than Ed, just as he suspected this morning after he jerked off. Best she realise that, he thinks, and rolls onto his side, staring into the dusty murk under the bed. Best she figure out how to protect herself from them both.

He wakes up in the dark. The dead have moved on, and outside his window there are only crickets chirping and the moan of the wind. He stinks of death, and his skin is dry and itchy under a layer of blood. He gets to his feet, listening. There is a faint sound from upstairs: Ed’s voice. Daryl opens the bedroom door. On the floor at his feet are a bottle of water and two granola bars.

He downs the water in a single long drink and carries the granola bars with him to the living room. There is a small light upstairs, candles, he guesses, unless one of them had a torch in their pack; but the living room is in darkness. No need for anyone to keep watch when they are barricaded inside, however cheap and flimsy this house might be. He does not notice the girl until he flops down in the armchair and puts his feet up on the coffee table. She is sitting in the corner of the couch, wrapped in her blanket like last night, her eyes translucent and her face unreadable as she looks at him.

“Jesus,” he says. “Thought you were a ghost.”

She doesn’t reply. He shifts uncomfortably, and rips open a granola bar, shoving half of it into his mouth. Upstairs, bed springs squeak once and then again, and Sophia twitches. He swallows a dry lump of granola and thinks of the handprint on Carol’s cheek after Ed hit her. Dropping his feet from the table, he leans forward, elbows on his knees, his skin crawling as the bed begins to squeak rhythmically. Crunching the second half of the bar, he throws the empty granola wrapper on the table. Sophia cringes from the movement. Stung, he stares at her.

“I can go sit in my room,” he says after a moment. “If you—.” He stops. If you’re scared of me now. But she shakes her head quickly, her eyes shimmering. Something clatters to the floor upstairs, and Daryl half rises, flexing his fingers. Don’t. He sinks back to his seat as the bed starts squeaking again.

“Mama said to tell you there’s water.” The words are slow and hesitant, half the soft syllables lost in the sounds from over their heads. “In the faucets.”

He nods. It is good news. There’s nothing else in this damn house other than fake fruit, as far as he can tell. But running water is an unexpected stroke of luck.

“Thanks,” he replies awkwardly. He wonders how long she’s been down here; marvels that Carol is still allowing him anywhere near her child. He’s no longer sure that the alternative is worse than his company, after the way he spoke to her. As if she can read his mind, Sophia speaks.

“She’s not—Mama’s not what you said.” The girl’s head is bowed, her eyes veiled behind pale lashes, her voice flat. Her hands twist in her lap. He flushes.

“Yeah I know.” Shame prickles up his spine, across the backs of his hands. “Shouldna said it. Didn’t mean it.”

Sophia looks up. Her eyes are like her mother’s, silver in this light, and they make her seem years older than she is. The faint ambient light from upstairs catches individual hairs at the edge of her silhouette, turning them white.

“I yelled—I yelled at her once too,” she offers. Daryl tries to imagine her speaking loudly, never mind shouting, and fails. She drops her gaze. “I called her names like my daddy does.” She pauses. “Like you did.”

He blinks, and struggles to speak past a regret that sits, dense and immovable, in his chest.

“She saved my life,” he croaks. “Your momma.”

The child waits, plucking at the blanket over her knees. Ed speaks upstairs, a sharp word ending in a load groan. Daryl thinks of the way Carol’s shoulders shone in the river, golden brown and wet, the white of her scalp beneath damp dark hair.

“She saved my life,” he repeats, and Sophia looks up.

“Why were you mad at her then?” she asks, her brow creasing. He rubs his hands over his face and sighs. There is silence from upstairs.

“Was mad ‘cause I—‘cause I thought she shoulda stayed safe,” he says. “Shoulda got in the car, you an’ her both.”

“But you were in danger.” The girl is warming to the conversation, her voice a little stronger, her frown deepening. He peers at her grimly.

“That ain’t important. What’s important is you an’ her stay away from walkers.”

She puzzles over this, clearly dissatisfied, and he toys with the unopened granola bar, flipping it back and forth between his finger and thumb. The headboard of the bed upstairs starts to rattle against the wall, the noise displacing his pulse until his blood clatters through him in the same rhythm.

“How come you ain’t scared of me like you were before,” he says. It isn’t really a question, because he doesn’t think she’d answer if he asked it. But he needs to speak over the the sound of whatever Ed is doing to Carol, her slender arms and the white of her breast, the soft curve of her mouth. “I waved a f—I waved a knife at her.” He bites his lip, wretched and ashamed. “At your momma. Said…those things.”

Sophia shifts on the cushions, lowering herself deeper into the couch, and rests her cheek against the upholstery, her eyes closing for a moment. Her face is worn suddenly, lined with a knowledge he is afraid to share, a weariness he used to see in his own face as a child, staring at him from their tarnished bathroom mirror. Her shoulders lift in a shrug.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. Maybe, he thinks, she simply has no energy left to fear him as well as her father. He is nothing but the lesser of two evils. But the girl frowns thoughtfully. “Mama isn’t.” Her hand comes up to her face and touches her jaw, her cheekbone, unconsciously. “Not anymore.”

“Yelled at her though.” He doesn’t deserve the child’s trust or her mother’s, and he doesn’t understand why Carol isn’t afraid of him, assuming Sophia is right.

“So did I. That time.” Sophia swipes at her face. The headboard hits the wall.

“Guess you shouldn’ yell at your momma an’ neither should I,” he says grudgingly, scowling an admonishment at the possibility of her tears. It doesn’t help. Her face crumples, one hand covering her eyes, and she turns into the back of the couch. Her shoulders shake, a tiny, muffled sob escaping as she puts her arms over her head to hide, an echo of her mother as she cowered from Ed.

Daryl grips the denim covering his knees. In under three seconds he could be back in his room, alone, the door shut on this child and this conversation. Sophia moves to wipe her nose on her arm and he sees her mouth, pulled down by grief, sees the effort with which she is trying to control herself.

“Don’t—dammit.” He stands, and shuffles round the coffee table to the couch, standing in front of her for a moment uselessly. He feels the sting of his father’s hand on his ear. Don’t be such a goddamn puss*. And then he sees Carol, her eyes filling with tears as he spits insults at her. He can’t fix that. But he can try not to f*ck up again on the same goddamn day.

His left knee creaks as he sinks into an awkward crouch between the couch and the coffee table. Sophia freezes, but her breath stutters on damply. Daryl extends a hand towards her knees, and it hovers there. He cannot manage to close the gap between the blanket and his palm, cannot bear the weight of touching her in this moment.

“Hey,” he says quietly. She doesn’t move, and he withdraws his hand, looking around desperately. “You want, uh, you want my other granola bar?”

Her arm drops a little, and a wet blue eye blinks at him. Encouraged, he points at the coffee table where the snack lies.

“Ain’t hungry for it. You want it?”

Her shoulders shake, and his heart sinks. But then she lowers her arm to her lap, and he sees she is laughing, a snuffling giggle that makes her eyes tear up again. He doesn’t know what has amused her, but it doesn’t matter. If she wanted him to pull faces for half an hour right now, if it would stop her tears, he would do it.

“I miss Carl,” she says, and the laugh shifts back into a sob, with a quickness that bewilders him. “And Lori and Dale. I miss Rick.”

For a ridiculous moment, he is wounded by the admission, embarrassed at having thought he could comfort her at all. He starts to rise, but she looks up at him, chin wobbling, cheeks streaked with tears.

“Do you think they’re okay?” Her voice is thin and high. He sighs, lowering himself back to the edge of the coffee table.

“Course they are,” he tells her. He thinks of Merle, cutting off his own hand and vanishing into the city. “They’re strong. Got—got good numbers.”

He has no idea whether they’re together or even whether they all survived the horde. But Sophia, searching his face, accepts the assertion, scrubbing at her face and sniffing. Pity for the girl writhes in his belly, squirming through his gut. He grew up with parents like hers, but he had the forest, and school, and sometimes he had Merle. This kid has only him right now as a means of escape. He tries to think of something else to say, but the responsibility is overwhelming suddenly, and the silence from upstairs plucks at his nerves almost more than the noise did. They have not once heard Carol’s voice. He stands up.

“Gonna get cleaned up,” he says tersely, and doesn’t look at the girl or wait for a reply before heading to the bathroom.

xxxx

Sophia is alone in the living room when Carol comes to fetch her, but there is an empty water bottle on the table which she knows is Daryl’s, a granola bar wrapper and a second one uneaten. Her child has been crying, and Carol draws her into an embrace as the girl gets off the couch, bending so her cheek is pressed to Sophia’s.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispers. “I’m so so sorry.” The words do not stand a chance of encompassing all that they need to, but she says them anyway, cupping the back of her daughter’s head with one hand. She washed herself before she came down, tried to get the smell of sex off herself, and her skin is cold and clammy. Ed is asleep already. There is a sharp heat between her legs, an ache that makes walking uncomfortable.

She takes Sophia up to the main bedroom, where she has put a mattress from the other upstairs room, and tucks her in. Sophia holds her hand and drifts off almost instantly. Carol takes the pink scented candle off the chest of drawers, leaves her husband and daughter asleep, and walks slowly downstairs.

He is waiting in the living room as though he knew she would return, and she can see he has showered, changed into cleaner clothes since this afternoon. He is on the couch, his crossbow and a fresh bottle of water in front of him, a worn rag in his hand as he squints down at the bow, cleaning it. As the candlelight licks the edge of the table, he looks up, his gaze opaque, colour in his cheeks. Dumb bitch.

“Can I—do you mind if I sit, uh, sit with you for a while?” she asks. He grunts, frowning as he looks down at the bow and works the rag beneath the string. She puts the candle on the table and sits in the armchair, pulling her legs up, wincing at a jolt of pain through her abdomen. Daryl’s eyes flick from his crossbow to her face, travel down her neck and across her chest, to her arms, her hands linked around her knees. From another man, the scrutiny would make her uneasy; from Daryl, it seems to be a reflex, absent of anything but concern.

“The walkers, did they—have you got any injuries?” Her voice quavers, and he shakes his head quickly.

“Nah. Bruises is all.” He is ill at ease, his tone bordering on sullen, but he meets her eyes for an instant. “You?”

“Same.” Her fall on the sidewalk left her with some scrapes, and her muscles are stiff from the struggle. Ed has made sure those are the least of her discomforts tonight. Daryl exhales loudly, as though he has been holding his breath, and his shoulders sag. She watches his fingers twist the rag, no longer applying it to the crossbow, and remembers how his skin felt against hers as he held her wrist. After a long silence, he glances at her.

“Ain’t worth it.” His brow furrows, and his eyes slide from hers, his throat working. “You got a—you got your girl to think about. You—I ain’t worth it.” His hands squeeze the rag, the scars on his knuckles shiny and pink as the skin turns white. “That ugly sh*t I said.” He stops, and a muscle in his jaw jumps. His eyes fix on hers suddenly, piercing blue. “Ain’t none of it true. Not for you, an’ not—not for me.”

She doesn’t understand for a moment, his turn of phrase confusing her. He looks down, his hair slipping across his forehead. Not for you and not for me. Her eyes sting as she figures it out: she is neither objectively a dumb bitch, nor does he consider her one. The subtlety of the distinction, the thought given to it as he composed this apology, are so unfamiliar that she finds it hard to speak.

“Of course you’re worth it,” she says hoarsely. He doesn’t look up. “Daryl? You’re as important as any of us.”

He shakes his head vigorously, but she doesn’t try again to convince him because she doesn’t want to cry, not so soon after being with Ed, not while she is trying to shut away everything he said and did, exhausted from staying silent through it. The candle flickers, and Daryl scrunches his nose.

“It’s rose-scented,” she says, seizing on the distraction. “Found it upstairs. Guess it’s meant to make the house look homey for buyers.”

“Smells like air freshener,” he mutters, and resumes cleaning his bow. His hands move confidently over it, testing the string, rolling it between his fingers. As he works, he keeps talking, filling the quiet, as though he senses she is struggling to speak. “Gotta check for gas tomorrow. Must be some somewhere in this town.” He wets the rag with a little water from a bottle. “Get food out the car and check some of the stores. Other houses. Least we’re okay in here if it takes a while to find fuel.”

She nods. They have space and water, and tomorrow they will have food. They have beds. She tries to ignore how oppressive the house feels with the four of them confined, how badly she wants to get out of here. Daryl finishes wiping off the crossbow bolts and gets up, shouldering the bow. She stands with him, though she doesn’t want to go upstairs, and they move past the coffee table. As he passes her, he stops, swaying slightly as though unsure of himself. She inhales the faint, metallic smell of blood lingering on his skin. He bends his head, his breath raising the tiny hairs at her temple.

“I make it worse?” he asks, his voice rough and quiet, and she remembers their conversation outside the dance studio. If you fight him, it’ll make everything worse. She doesn’t know the answer to his question. Ed had more than one reason to be cruel to her tonight. She shakes her head.

“No,” she whispers. Daryl lifts his head and she peers up at him. His face is troubled, doubt in his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Guttural, desolate, the words he didn’t say earlier. “Carol, I’m sorry.”

She smiles, a small, joyless movement of her mouth, the only way she knows to keep everything inside her in place. But as she does so, she lifts a hand and touches her fingers lightly to his shirt, just over his sternum; rests them there for as long as she dares, drawing the warmth out of him and into herself, more comfort than she has felt for years.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Daryl and Ed find the liquor in one of the houses in the development, the one right at the front under the sign sayingHorizon Homes. They reach it mid-morning on the group’s second day in the town, checking cars for gas and houses for food, the tension between them already at a level that has rendered Daryl almost mute for fear that he will end up hitting Ed. Their spare gas cans, discovered in a ransacked storeroom at the gas station, hold barely enough fuel right now to get them five miles from here. All they have thus far are contaminated dregs from the tanks of cars in the forecourt and down in these driveways.

They will have to widen their search later, into the town itself, the thought of which makes Daryl anxious. Sophia and Carol are barricaded in the show house, and with each stretch of sidewalk that opens between him and that house, he becomes more fretful and distracted. He left Carol with his knife, because Ed had nothing she could use for self-defence. She eyed the weapon with trepidation when Daryl laid it on the counter, and it was Sophia who picked it up, her fingers tight on the worn handle, her gaze shifting from the scuffed steel blade to Daryl’s face.

“Hold it with both hands if you end up havin’ to use it,” he told her, and Carol blanched, taking the knife gingerly from her daughter. Her hands looked hardly bigger than the child’s on the handle, but once it was in her grasp her expression changed, curiosity replacing nervousness, and she moved her fingers against the wood in a way that made Daryl’s mouth go dry. Ed plucked the knife from her hands and set it back on the kitchen counter.

“Don’t mess with it,” he snapped at Carol. “Leave it the hell alone unless you need it.”

She nodded, folding her arms, and Ed rested one hand on the back of Sophia’s neck, his thumb stroking the skin just under the neck of her shirt.

“Daddy will be back soon,” he said, and Sophia jerked her head in acknowledgement as he bent down and kissed her cheek. Carol rocked on her feet, minutely, her mouth opening as if to speak, and Daryl cut in before she could, scowling at the other man.

“C’mon. Wastin’ time.”

Ed straightened up and drew Sophia against his body, holding her to him for a moment with her neck still in his grasp. The child stiffened and curled her fingers into fists, and Carol’s uninjured hand twitched towards her daughter before she pulled it back. Daryl turned and flung open the front door, barking a farewell over his shoulder and hoping Ed would follow him.

Until this one, the houses they explored were unlocked, some of the doors broken off the hinges. But this one is secured. Ed watches Daryl with a smug, knowing look as the younger man picks the lock with a piece of wire, reluctant to shatter a window or slam his shoulder against the door, worried the noise will draw the dead to them.

“Looks like you got some experience,” Ed says snidely as the lock clicks open, and Daryl flushes. Merle used to praise his quick fingers when he was a kid, the way Daryl could sense the workings of a lock through whatever he was using to pick it.

“Lucky for you, yeah,” he snaps.

The place is messy but doesn’t appear to have been thoroughly looted; rather, the lock suggests its inhabitants grabbed some belongings and fled, hoping to return. A thick woollen jacket hangs on the coatrack beside the front door, and jars of rice and pasta are visible on the counter of the open-plan kitchen. Ed puts his revolver on the coffee table and flops onto the couch. The gun is supposed to impress Daryl, judging by the way the man has waved it around this morning, but it is more trouble than it is worth in this place, a single shot guaranteed to summon more walkers than the chamber holds bullets. Ed picks up a toy car from between the couch cushions and spins the wheels, yawning, as Daryl shrugs off his pack.

“Ain’t here for a tea party,” he says. “You want downstairs or upstairs?”

Ed sighs, and heaves himself to his feet, trudging towards the stairs.

“Might take a nap while I’m at it,” he says, and looks back at Daryl, grinning. “Up late with the wife last night.”

In the kitchen, Daryl stares unseeing for a moment through the window, thinking of Carol’s fingertips against his chest. Five tiny pressure points, the velvet brush of her hair inches from his face. He does not like being touched, nor touching others. But when her hand left his sternum, she took something with it—some measure of peace he doesn’t know how to get back. He slept poorly last night, plagued by nightmares, his chest prickling beneath the cotton of his shirt.

A closet door bangs upstairs, and Daryl blinks. The backyard of this house has a barbecue in one corner, the cover hanging off the end, and a free-standing wooden porch swing, the cushions faded to a blotchy pink. It creaks in the remnants of yesterday’s wind, a gusting breeze that rattles through the housing development every few minutes.

He finds Tupperware containers in a cupboard, and tips the rice and pasta into two of them before investigating the other cupboards. They have been opened and partially emptied, but there are still odds and ends at the backs of the shelves: an unopened jar of peanut butter, small sachets of Red Star yeast, two boxes of muffin mix. Potatoes, long softened and shrivelled, have sent spindly tendrils through a basket in the dark of the pantry cupboard, the stench of rotten onions making Daryl’s eyes water. He doesn’t open the fridge; the smell from it is bad enough as it is. But on top of it, he finds a jar of fancy chocolate-covered almonds, which he adds to his pack.

A whoop from upstairs startles him, and he reaches for his crossbow, pausing in the hallway between the bathroom and the kitchen.

“Everythin’ okay up there?” he calls.

“Yeah yeah yeah.” The other man’s voice is gleeful, muffled by the walls and floor. Daryl grimaces in distaste and heads into the bathroom. The inhabitants of this house did their best to change the neutral colour scheme, and the shower curtain is a riot of sunshine yellow, orange, and acid green swirls. There are unopened bottles of grapefruit shampoo and conditioner in the vanity, a roll of cottonwool, three bars of soap, and a brass bowl of nail polish: baby pink, light blue, crimson, taupe. Daryl fingers one of the tiny bottles and then crams it into his pocket, scooping up the others too. Maybe Sophia likes nail polish. Maybe Carol does.

Back in the living room, he dumps his pack and waits for Ed, lighting a cigarette. He won’t fit much else into the worn canvas bag; they have been through at least five houses this morning. The breeze races past the windows, nudging the panes, and he closes his eyes as he inhales. They found a carton of smokes in another house; not his brand, but not bad either.

“Hit the jackpot.” Ed is at the top of the stairs, carrying a black duffel bag, cradling it in his arms as he descends. The bag clinks and scrapes. Daryl squints up at him through a puff of smoke.

“Gas cans?” he asks sarcastically. But Ed is too pleased with himself to register Daryl’s irritation. He lays the duffel bag on the couch and unzips it. Inside there are bottles: wine, vodka, a broad, squat bottle of tequila and one of whisky. Beneath the gleaming red and amber, the diamond clarity of the vodka, is a creamy pale brown liqueur.

“Here.” Ed pulls a bottle of Jim Beam out the bag and tosses it to Daryl, who snatches it from the air with one hand. “This one’s yours. Rest is mine.”

xxxx

The men come back at midday to drop off what they’ve found, and head out again after a meal of salami and sweetcorn, both part of their morning haul. They have brought back food, some T-shirts, but very little fuel. Daryl is brooding and silent; Ed is in an excellent mood thanks to a stash of liquor he discovered, which he lays on the kitchen counter tenderly. He tells Carol and Sophia not to touch it, and eats his lunch standing beside the bag with all the pride of a new father.

Carol unzips the duffel bag as soon as they are gone, and stares at the contents, fear sliding like a blade up her spine. Hard liquor makes Ed worse in every way, fills him with a rage, a vicious energy, that are immune to her wheedling and cajoling. For a moment, she considers tipping the contents of the bag down the sink. But the last time she did that, with a bottle of tequila he received as a corporate gift, he broke her arm and wouldn’t let her go to the ER for two days. She closes the bag slowly and sits on one of the stools at the kitchen counter, covering her face with her hands. As it is, she is struggling to cope with Ed’s demands, with the version of him she works each day to conjure through flattery and smiles. She rubs her eyes and glances at her daughter.

“Put that down,” she says curtly. At the other end of the counter, Sophia is holding Daryl’s knife again, in both hands, the blade carefully pointed away from her. At her mother’s voice, she drops the weapon, and it thuds to the counter, the metal flashing in a beam of sunlight coming through the window. The girl’s face reddens.

“What if a walker comes?” she asks, a sulky edge to the question. Carol sighs.

“Then we hide. And if it finds us, I stab it.”

“You don’t know even know how to use the knife.” The resentment in Sophia’s voice is about more than the weapon, more than her mother’s ineptitude in this version of the world. Carol looks down.

“Sophia.”

“What?” The girl slides off her stool, her arms folded. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I’m trying.” Her voice is calm and firm, her despair suffocating.Of course you’re right, she wants to say.I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to live like this. “I know things are—things are hard right now. But I’m trying. I’m—sorry.”

Their eyes meet, and the anger drains from Sophia as suddenly as it arrived. She hugs herself, her face softening into misery. Carol’s throat seizes on another apology.

“Maybe Daryl can teach us,” her daughter whispers, and looks at the knife. “He said he’d teach me to fish.”

Carol makes quiet sound of surprise. “He did?”

The girl nods. She has faded into silence once more, into a shadow. Only her occasional anger at her mother seems to solidify her into someone substantial, bringing into relief a person Carol hardly knows: fierce and resentful andpresent.

“Maybe he can do that,” Carol says, offering her child a smile. Sophia looks back at her expressionlessly. They both know neither of them will be allowed to learn to use a knife, no matter how willing Daryl might be, which seems frankly unlikely to Carol. She cannot say it—can barely bring herself to think it—but she is sure he will leave the Peletiers eventually, unable to endure the violence and dysfunction of their family; strike out on his own and get further, faster, than he can with them.

“Let’s sort through the things they found this morning,” Carol says brusquely, getting off her stool, determined to ignore the weight in her chest. “Decide what to have for dinner.”

Daryl tipped the contents of his pack onto the coffee table before lunch, a haphazard spill of items. Carol and Sophia take out the food first, arranging it on the counter. There are also toiletries, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap and shampoo, and on the armchair, a jumble of nail polish colours. Carol noticed Daryl empty his pocket there, but didn’t realise what he was turning out, and she picks up a glowing ruby red, smiling as she tips it and watches the liquid slide from end to end.

“Can we do our nails, Mama?” Sophia comes to kneel next to the chair, touching a finger to the ballet pink and then a creamy yellow. Her face is bright with excitement when she looks up.

“Why don’t—why don’t I, uh, do yours?” Carol says. She hasn’t worn nail polish since her wedding day. Ed doesn’t allow it. But she cannot bring herself to take away this small joy from her daughter. Sophia nods eagerly, picking up the pink bottle.

“This one,” she says, and Carol sends up a prayer of thanks that she has chosen a colour which Ed might not notice. The red in Carol’s hand is warm now, the corners of the bottle digging into her palm. She puts it in her pocket; it is pretty to look at even if she can’t use it.

The sweet, pungent smell of the polish fills the living room when she shakes and opens the pink, and she hesitates, worried the scent will linger until the men get back. Sophia has spread her hands on the coffee table, long fingers with badly chewed nails, the skin around the cuticles shiny and red.

The process could be over in minutes. The girl’s nails are small. But Carol takes her time, painting with painstaking accuracy, letting the first coat dry thoroughly before she does a second. Sophia watches, her fingers very still, her face glowing with a pleasure Carol has seldom seen since her child was three or four, and a self-conscious enjoyment ofbeing prettywhich Carol herself barely recognises. She thinks of Ed’s hand on his daughter’s neck, his eyes on her front, the frequency with which he kisses and hugs her lately. The smell of the nail polish is suddenly sickening.

It has been a year since she began to suspect Ed of wanting to molest his daughter; a year since she found him watching Sophia in the bath, the bathroom door ajar just a crack. And she has been vigilant since then, so vigilant it sometimes feels like she never properly sleeps. She never leaves them alone together. She stays near the bathroom or Sophia’s bedroom when the child is in either, and she tries to be what Ed wants, tries to satisfy whatever depraved need he harbours: shaves herself smooth and submits to him. It is not enough,sheis not enough, because there are things she cannot bring herself to do. Her refusal to say the things he demands of her sometimes makes him madder after sex than he was before. She was almost ready to leave him when the world ended, almost sure thatthistime, they could run and hide and not go back. Now, she and her daughter are trapped, with no one but Daryl as an involuntary buffer between them and Ed.

xxxx

The afternoon is less successful than Daryl hoped. In part, this is because the town, as they discovered the day before, is full of the dead. The Main Street, apparently empty when they drove in, now has walkers swaying gently on street corners and lurking in stores. Ed being armed only with his revolver means Daryl has to be lookout while the other man checks tanks for gas. Ed is clumsy and slow, and spends as much time complaining about the job as he spends doing it.

Their canisters fill up slowly, layers of liquid settling into one another, the top flecked with dirt. By late afternoon, they have enough for half the Jeep’s tank, and Daryl is thirsty, frustrated, and splattered with blood. Before they give up for the day, they duck into the town’s biggest clothing store. The weather is starting to turn, and last night was cooler than they’re used to. Carol asked if they could look for sweaters, maybe a hoodie for Sophia.

The mannequins in the window are neatly posed, their silhouettes unsettling against the grubby glass. The store smells musty, and the air dances with dust motes, but the clothes are still mostly hanging on rails, the place strangely untouched. Maybe the owner lived longer than most, or maybe the chain on the door, which Daryl sliced through with a bolt cutter from his pack, dissuaded others from breaking in.

Daryl goes to the men’s section, grabbing two black shirts in thick brushed cotton. Ed is down the other end, among the kids’ clothes, and Daryl has to pass through the ladies’ section to get there. He slows as he reaches the warmer clothes, frowning. Carol is Ed’s wife, and Ed will doubtless choose something for her. But there is a rack of soft, periwinkle sweaters, made of some fine silky wool that Daryl knows will be warm and light. They might get ambushed before Ed has found something—it’s only prudent to grab this while it’s right in front of him, and so he does, shoving it to the bottom of his pack.

The other man is nowhere near the hoodies when Daryl reaches him. He is standing at a rack of underwear, panties in pastel shades, training bras in white cotton. He glances at Daryl, his thumb tracing a bra strap.

“My baby’s gonna need one soon,” he says. “Little titt*es comin’ in.” He smiles strangely, holding Daryl’s gaze for a moment before turning back to the underwear. The mannequins lean closer, the wind lapping like water at the windows of the store, and there is a roaring in Daryl’s ears which resolves gradually into Carol’s voice at the gas station a few days back.Ed, she wants to be private. A broken finger for her trouble. He thought he understood what he saw in the Peletiers, viewed them through the filter of his own childhood and assumed he knew what Carol was trying to endure. His stomach turns over, and he is lightheaded for a second, the world tilting. Sophia’s stiffness beneath her father’s gaze, Carol’s constant anxiety.Daddy’s baby girl.Slowly, silently, Daryl lifts his bow, and as his surroundings come into focus once more, aims it at the back of Ed’s head. One shot. That’s all he would need.

Ed turns.

“The hell you doin’?” His pupils flare, his face slack with fright. Daryl stares at him down the arrow track of the bow. And then he thinks of Carol’s fingertips last night, the flesh and bone of her, the tenderness of her voice when she speaks to her daughter. Is this what she wants from him after all? That he murder her husband?

“Thought I saw somethin’ back there,” he says hoarsely, pointing with his chin towards the railings behind Ed, and lowers the bow. The older man eyes him a moment longer, and he clears his throat. “Gotta get back. We’re done for today.”

The older man pushes past him without a word, a scrap of cotton clutched in his hand. Daryl grabs a black hoodie off a rack before he follows Ed into the street, tying it by the arms around the strap of his pack as he walks. The sky has started turning gold, and the wind is tossing papers down the middle of the street. A poster for a lost cat flutters on a lamppost as Daryl stops on the kerb, watching his companion stride ahead. As Ed walks, he drops the fabric in his hand: a pair of panties, small and white, unfolding in the filthy gutter as they fall.

xxxx

Daryl drinks that night as she has not seen him drink since the CDC. He eats the cold dinner she makes and then sits with his back against the wall under the living room window, a bottle of Jim Beam in his hand, sipping steadily. There is a concentration to his behaviour that suggests his intention is to get as drunk as possible. She remembers, dimly, that he was a loud and cheerful drunk last time. But he is neither of those tonight. He is morose, so thoroughly lost in whatever is consuming him that none of them even tries to talk to him.

She plays a game of magnetic chess with Sophia on the coffee table, and Ed slouches in the armchair watching them, also drinking. He has not touched the wine, opting for the hard liquor instead, and the extent of Carol’s dread for later on makes it hard for her to feign enjoyment of the game. Sophia plays grimly, her eyes shifting between her father and Daryl while she waits for Carol to take her turn.

Daryl heads to bed first, without a word to any of them, simply peeling himself away from the wall and staggering towards the hallway. He goes to the bathroom, the sound of him pissing reaching them through the flimsy walls. Carol reddens, bumping the chess board with her elbow as she finishes a turn, knocking over a knight. The toilet flushes and a moment later Daryl’s bedroom door slams. They play on for fifteen minutes, her pieces and Sophia’s circling each other in an endless negotiation for dominance.

“Check mate,” Sophia says at last, her voice devoid of either triumph or pleasure. Carol nods, smiling at her in congratulations, and the girl gets to her feet, eager to end the evening. Ed wets his lips, his gaze sharpening.

“Come sit on your daddy’s lap.” He pats his thighs. The bottle tucked between his leg and the arm of the couch is almost empty. Sophia shoots a frightened look at Carol, tugging at the hem of her shirt.

“She’s too big for your lap now,” Carol says quietly. Ed turns bloodshot, bleary eyes on her.

“Shut your goddamn mouth for a change.” He reaches out and grabs Sophia’s wrist, yanking her towards him, and Carol stands up quickly. “Said get on my lap, girl.”

“Let her go.” Her voice shakes, but she steps nearer to her husband.

“The f*ck is this?” He lifts his daughter’s hand towards his face, ignoring Carol, squinting at the child’s fingers. Sophia is trembling, her eyes damp.

“I painted Sophia’s nails for her today.” Carol slips into the soothing, singsong voice that sometimes works when Ed is wine drunk. He sneers in disgust, dropping the girl’s arm.

“You look like a little slu*t,” he says. “A whor* like your momma.”

Carol reaches for Sophia and pulls her past Ed’s legs.

“Go upstairs,” she whispers, holding the girl close for a second. “Lock yourself in the spare room.”

Ed is rising from his seat, with effort, the liquor forgotten. By the time he is upright, the door upstairs is closing. Carol listens for the click of the lock, her eyes stinging when she hears it. She exhales, her legs watery with terror, and looks up at her husband.

“Come to bed,” she says gently to Ed as he steps towards her. His fist hits her cheekbone, splitting the skin, and she falls between the table and the couch, crawling away from him, swallowing a cry. He kicks her on the back of one thigh, and then he is straddling her, his hands closing on the back of her shirt and dragging her upwards, blood wetting her cheek and sliding along her jaw.

“Please,” she gasps. “Please.” She wants, so badly that she has to bite her lip, to call for Daryl, to scream for the help she said she didn’t need. Instead, she begs her husband for mercy. “Please, Ed, I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t reply. Outside, the wind is building to a crescendo—fences creaking, a screen door rattling, a loose roof gutter clanging against the wall of the house next door. But inside, apart from her own ragged breathing, and Ed’s grunting as he throws her across the coffee table, there is only silence.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

The wind is wailing. He is inside it, enveloped in a rancid darkness, and inside it with him is a sound he hasn’t heard since he was a child. His stomach churns as he sits up, his head begging him to lie down again. He closes his eyes, but swings his legs off the bed and stands up, staggering towards the door. He rests his forehead against it. The plywood is cool and smooth, the handle cold in his grasp.

In the hallway, he opens his eyes, because the sound that tugs at him, the sound he can’t place, is closer now. The darkness is smothering, the world beyond it clattering and shrieking, and for a moment he sees nothing. His mouth is dry and tacky, every breath sour with alcohol. The rectangle of a window appears, a door. The bottom of the banister at the far end of the room. Closer to him, there is a confusion of lines and shapes. Two of them are moving.

She is on her knees, and at first all he can see is the profile of her breasts, the skin gleaming with something, her nipples stiff. As she moves, her breasts bounce against her ribcage. Blood rushes to his co*ck, and he is dizzy for a moment, caught between his body’s response and what he is seeing. There is something odd about the way she is holding herself, her torso stiff, resisting the rhythm with which the man in front of her is thrusting his co*ck into her mouth. The man’s hands skim over her head, his fingers raking through hair that isn’t there, curling into fists around invisible strands. She gags, and he cups her head and grinds her face against his crotch. Her throat spasms, stretched taut around his shaft. Her hand, the one nearest to Daryl, rises and flails at the man’s thigh, clawing weakly at his skin, but he ignores it, flabby buttocks clenching as he pushes deeper into her throat. The sound is wet, her mouth grotesquely wide around the base of his co*ck. When she gags again, her shoulders lifting, the man comes, one hand around her neck so he can feel himself inside her. She convulses with him, choking and swallowing, and when he at last pulls out of her mouth, he retains his hold on her throat and bends close to her face. He is waiting for something. His fingers tighten around her windpipe a little, and a little more. Her mouth moves. The man releases her and takes hold of his co*ck, soft now, stroking it.

“Again,” he snarls. “Say it so I can hear it.”

“f*ck me, Daddy.” The words are hoarse, her chest heaving, and she retches once she has spoken. Daryl wants to wake up, but he has never been able to escape his nightmares until they have played themselves out. The woman touches her fingertips to her mouth, wiping something away, and whispers, “Please Daddy.”

There is something solid and warm against his feet where there should be nothing. He blinks into the darkness, uncertain where he is for a moment, images from his dreams lingering. He reaches for the knife on the nightstand, easing it from the sheath. Sitting up, he lifts the weapon in readiness, adrenalin fighting the alcohol in his veins.

Sophia is curled at the foot of the bed, folded tightly into herself, her arms locked around her knees. Her hair has fallen across her face, but she is asleep, her shoulders rising and falling in quiet, even breaths. He stares at her, lowering the knife, and tries to remember her coming into the room; tries to remember anything after he reached the halfway mark in that bottle of Jim Beam. All he can find are the fragments of a nightmare and the endless howl of the wind.f*ck me, Daddy. Burning vomit creeps up the back of his throat, and he rubs his face with the back of his hand.Please, Daddy.

He is afraid, suddenly, the sluggish drag of blood in his veins shifting to a panicked throb, his pulse counted out in dull drumbeats against the front of his skull. Getting to his feet, he goes to the bedroom door, and in the same moment that he notices it is ajar, he hears a soft sound from the living room. Gripping his knife, he pushes the door open and walks up the hallway. A sense of déjà vu slows his steps as he nears the living room, a growing certainty that what he will find when he reaches the front of the house is what he saw in his dream, Carol on her knees, Ed— Daryl squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.Just a dream.But he is no longer so sure it was.

The rose-scented candle burning on the kitchen counter cannot conceal the smells of blood and cum in the living room. The coffee table is on its side, the couch at a diagonal, tiny magnetic chess pieces scattered across the floor. The rug is stained with blood, a thin trail towards the stairs, patches near the coffee table. On the armchair is a puddle of fabric. Carol’s top, her jeans. And next to them, a greying bra with a twist of wire protruding from it.

Daryl drops the knife, which thuds dully against the rug, and his hands close on the back of the chair, his fingers chafing the upholstery. He hears his own voice as though it is coming from someone else,Jesus Christ Jesus Christ, and he remembers the nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare, how he stood and watched and turned away. And then he makes himself look around the room, because he knows she is here; he heard her from his room, a whimper, a moan, the hitch of her breath.

She is in the corner, right at the front door, staring at him. Her face is cut and bruised, the marks that had almost faded restored and embellished, a crust of blood covering her cheek. She is clutching a blanket to her chest with one hand, covering herself, her shoulders bare, one of them all wrong: the curve interrupted by the bulge of a bone, an angle that shouldn’t be there. Daryl thinks of his dream—hisnotdream—and remembers the strange stiffness in her torso, the way she tried not to jostle it too much.

“Carol. f*ck. Carol.” He moves towards her, stumbling over one of the coffee table legs, hitting his shin on a side table that is split down the middle. She watches him, her back against the wall and the door, and doesn’t speak until he is a foot away from her.

“My arm, I need to—” She lifts it slowly from her side, gritting her teeth. They are stained with a film of red from a cut in her lip. Daryl’s vision blurs, and he looks down, finds himself staring at her naked hip, the curve of her waist, where she has not been able to wrap the blanket around herself with only one hand. Between the bruises, her skin is white and smooth, silk stretched tight over stone. He does not let himself see more. Stepping forward, he lifts the blanket from where it hangs and holds it against her side, concealing her, his hand pinning it beneath the arm she has lifted and held forward.

This close to her, he can smell more sharply the stink of blood and urine and cum, the liquor Ed drank last night. Her arm shakes, a barrier between them, and she moves it gradually forward, tears spilling down her face though she makes no sound. Daryl feels the flutter of her heartbeat in his palm, his thumb on the soft skin below her armpit. She closes her eyes. Air whines from her lungs, and she jerks her arm forward, her shoulder scraping back into place, the ridge of bone smoothed away.

She does not fall into his arms. She stands with her elbow bent against her stomach, her eyes lowered, and then she takes a step closer to him, close enough that the blanket brushes his shirt, close enough that her bare feet bracket one of his boots. Her head turns, her temple coming to rest where her hand did last night, and she begins to tremble. The movement is fine at first, a shiver that passes through her; but in an instant it becomes something more—a shaking that rustles the blanket, her teeth chattering. She tries to speak, an inarticulate moan against his chest, and it is unbearable, so awful a sound that he bends his head to hers and whispersssshhhssshhh ssshhh, each of his inhalations rasping and high pitched. He lifts the hand that isn’t holding the blanket and pulls her more tightly against him to try to still her shaking, the bare skin of her back sending a jolt of shock through him. Against the calluses on his palm her vertebrae press, warm and hard, his fingertips slotting between her ribs.Ssshhh. She shakes and shakes, her arm crooked between them, and at some point, he leaves the blanket to be held up by their bodies and puts his arms around her properly. She is astonishingly small against him, but her trembling passes straight into his muscles, finding the fault lines in his body and awakening them one by one until he is shaking too.

xxxx

She brought the candle downstairs because she was afraid of falling, both on the stairs and over the wreckage of furniture in the living room. Ed dragged her up to their room and locked the door behind them before he passed out, her blood under his nails. She sat beside him for hours, afraid to move lest he wake up, but when the pain in her shoulder became unbearable, she came downstairs. Now, in Daryl’s arms, she regrets not leaving the candle behind. His face when he saw her was so anguished that she wishes she could find the words to comfort him as he holds her.I’m fine. Her voice refuses to shape them.

She becomes slowly aware of her nakedness as she leans against his chest, his arms crossed against her back, the fabric of his shirt worn and soft. He holds her tightly, her shoulder throbbing and her bruises hot with the pressure, but there is still a kind of restraint in his embrace, a fear that translates into stiffness. As soon as she can stand the loss of contact, she breaks the hug, stepping back, clutching at the blanket. Daryl’s eyes flick downwards, and back to her face. She points at the sweatpants and T-shirt she brought downstairs with her, dropped on the floor as she put the candle on the counter.

“Can you pass them to me please?” she asks. Her voice is hoarse, her throat bruised inside and out. Daryl’s eyes shimmer, and he picks up the clothes without looking away from her, backing up until he can bend down and snatch them from the floor. He returns to her and holds them out, and she blushes, the heat making her face feel swollen and sore. He mumbles something, an apology maybe, turning around, his shoulders squared and his breathing ragged.

She doesn’t look down at her body when she drops the blanket. It is a blur of pain, of stickiness and shock, and she will deal with it later, privately. It takes her long minutes to put the pants on one-handed, and even longer for the T-shirt, an involuntary gasp torn from her as she moves her arm to get it into the sleeve.

“Carol?” He half-turns, his eyes on the ground, an unsteady hand reaching back towards her. She touches his knuckles lightly with her fingers.I’m fine.Her mouth tastes of Ed, of salt and metal. Daryl rocks on the balls of his feet, dropping his hand, swiping his wrist across his eyes. “Gotta—clean your face,” he rasps. “Do you—do you—what do you need?”

She wants to reach for him again, but it would be asking too much; more, she thinks, than he has tolerance for. Instead, she limps forward and touches his shoulder so he knows he can turn to face her.

“I need to go up and check on Sophia. Before—” She gestures towards her face.

“She ain’t up there,” he says. “She’s in my room.” He glances towards the hallway. “Woke up an’ she was…sleepin’ there. Bottom of my bed.”

Carol hasn’t cried all night, not as Ed beat her, not as he raped her, not as he hauled her upstairs, her dislocated shoulder thumping against the steps. But when she follows Daryl to his bedroom doorway and sees the dark shape of her child, huddled like a stray puppy at the foot of this man’s bed, she sobs, a low, awful sound which she tries to stifle with a hand over her mouth. Daryl leads her out of the room and eases the door shut, and this time he takes her in his arms of his own volition, even though she resists, more sobs caught in her throat, her mouth bleeding beneath the press of her hand. One arm around her shoulders, he cups the back of her head with his other hand,ssshhh, the sound splintered around a jagged breath. She cries into the curve of his neck, his skin smelling of alcohol and tobacco and somehow of trees, sap and bark and earth. His body sways back and forth in a rhythm that finally quiets her, his thumb moving a little over her hair, his head bent so she can feel his breath against her temple. This time, she senses no fear in him, no hesitation. He clings to her for a time after her weeping has eased, still rocking, as though he too is drawing comfort from it.

In the living room, she sits on the couch while he rights the coffee table and fetches Hershel’s first aid kit, a bottle of water, the jar of chocolate almonds he found yesterday. He sits on the edge of the table and unscrews the lid.

“Sugar,” he says and thrusts the jar at her. Her jaw aches too much to chew, but she takes one and rests it on her tongue, the chocolate melting slowly, replacing the taste of Ed in her mouth. Daryl fumbles with the packet of a disinfectant wipe, and then stops and looks at her. His face is shuttered suddenly, his gaze distant. He curls his lip, inhaling deeply through his nose.

“Tell me an’ I’ll—” He drops his gaze, smoothing out the packet in his fingers. “Just say it. That’s all.”

She frowns in confusion, and he lifts his head, his eyes sliding towards the stairs.Ed.

“Tell me to do it.” There is a plea in his voice, vehement and distraught, and the knowledge of what he is asking comes to her slowly. She shakes her head, and he hisses a curse, crushing the packet in his hand. His eyes are wild when he meets hers. “Why the f*ck not? After he—the way he—an’Sophia.”

For a moment, her shame is worse than any of the pain in her body, settling like a yoke across her shoulders. She doesn’t know how Daryl figured it out, or when. She only knows what he must think of her. He stands up, startling her, and she turns her face to the side in an instinctive, protective gesture, shrinking from his rage.

“It’s not for him,” she whispers quickly. “It’s not because I don’t want him—gone.” She fiddles with the neckline of her T-shirt with one hand, the other lying uselessly in her lap, her whole arm alive with pain radiating from her shoulder. Her voice is thin as she finishes what she needs to say. “But I won’t ask you to do that. To—to become that.”

She braces herself for his wrath, bowing her head. There is silence, the creak of the table as he sits down again, a heavy sigh. Foil crinkles, and Daryl leans forward, his face close to hers.

“Gonna sting,” he says softly. “I’ll try be quick.”

He starts with the split flesh of her cheek, cleaning the wound and the dried blood around it, and then he wipes her lip, the alcohol on the wipe burning as he dabs at her open mouth. There are abrasions on her arm, and he holds it gently between his finger and thumb as he tends to them. She begins to watch him eventually, the crease between his eyebrows, the way he chews his bottom lip in concentration. He is a distraction from the injuries he is cleaning, the bite on her neck, the scratch across her chest. He wipes only the part above her T-shirt, his eyes dark with anger at the neat parallel marks of Ed’s nails, and then he wets a clean piece of bandage and wipes her hands, finger by finger, cradling them as though they are made of porcelain. When he is done, he makes a sling out of bandage fabric, and loops it around her neck, holding it so she can slide her arm inside.

“Gotta keep it stabilised,” he says, his eyes on her limp hand. She thinks of the canvas sling at home in her medicine cabinet, used year after year.

“I was going to leave him,” she says abruptly. “Just before everything ended.” She looks down at her ring finger, the gold band just visible below the strapping holding it to its broken companion. “We tried a few times. Me and Sophia. Shelters. He kept finding us.” Her throat is raw. “I planned for a whole year, every detail.” She laughs. “And then everything went to sh*t.” She looks at Daryl, her voice shaking. “I’ll die before I let him—touch her like that.”

“I know.” He says it without hesitation, as though it was never in question. His hands are restless on his knees. “So does he. An’ he’s gonna kill you. He—” He inhales in a hiccup, and she realises he is close to tears.

“Oh Daryl, don’t—don’t—” She reaches forward and rests her hand on his, and though he flinches, he doesn’t pull away. His eyes move across her features, taking in all the ugliness Ed has beaten into them. He does not know what is hidden by her clothes, or the depths to which she sank in the last few hours.

“What do youwantfrom me?” He has asked her this before, but the question is different this time: quieter, more vulnerable, imbued with a grief that permits her own, allowing her to tell him the truth.

“I want to get away from him. Take her away.” She withdraws her hand from Daryl’s and looks down, her voice fading to a whisper. “Can you help me?”

Xxxx

Her eyes are heavy by the time he has finished cleaning her face and arms, her skin greyish and clammy beneath the bruising. He makes her drink some water and takes her to his room. She walks unaided, limping, her hand dragging along the plaster of the hallway wall to steady herself, and he makes fists to force himself not to reach for her.

Sophia doesn’t stir when they enter the room, and Carol pauses on the threshold, leaning against the wall, looking down at her child. Daryl passes her and turns over the pillow on the bed, straightening the comforter, embarrassed that she will be lying where he has tossed and sweated and dreamt.

“The floor is fine,” she whispers.

“No, it ain’t.” There is so little she will let him do for her. In the gloom, her lips look paler than her skin where they aren’t darkened by bruising. “Need you to lie down.” His voice catches. “She—she needs you to—rest.”

Carol’s chin wobbles, and she moves to the bed, lowering herself slowly, closing her eyes as she eases herself back onto the pillow. A spasm of pain crosses her face, but she opens her eyes and tries to smile at Daryl.

“Thank you,” she says, and her chest heaves as she fights tears again. “I’m sorry for this. For all the trouble we’ve brought you.”

He crouches beside the bed, at the pillow, and wonders that she should be thinking of him at all; that she should be able to bear the wounds on her body and consider them as inconveniencinghim. He doesn’t know the words to tell her why he is still here, why he hunted so desperately for her daughter in the woods, why he is willing to kill a man in cold blood for her. So he doesn’t speak. He holds her gaze, softening his expression, and when a tear trickles from the corner of her eye, he thumbs it away. She turns her face from him as more fall, and he watches the tension in her jaw as she struggles to cry silently. After a while, he rests his head on the edge of the mattress, ignoring the sting of salt in his own eyes, listening as her breathing at last steadies and deepens.

“Daryl?” The syllables are slurred, her lashes fluttering against her cheek when he lifts his head. He swallows around a lump in his throat.

“’M here,” he whispers. “Ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

He sits down with his back against the nightstand, his shoulder jammed against the side of the bed, and he stays there until she is so deeply asleep she barely seems to be breathing. Her fingers tremble, on and on, her injured arm in the sling across her chest, and he thinks about how, for a split second, he was aroused by the sight of her breasts as she knelt before Ed. And then he thinks about how he turned and went back to bed, only half-conscious, leaving her to whatever followed.f*ck me, Daddy.

In the bathroom, he vomits the last of the whisky in his belly, a fiery acid that burns his throat as he bends over the toilet. When he is finished, he spits until his mouth is dry, and then he drinks from the faucet, splashing his face. The house is silent, the hour, he guesses, around 2am.

There is blood on the stairs, tiny splatters, a thin smear along the wall. The door of the main bedroom is standing open, and he can hear Ed snoring softly. Soundlessly, Daryl crosses the landing and enters the room. Carol’s husband is sprawled across the bed, wearing only a half-unbuttoned shirt, his flaccid co*ck curled against his thigh. Daryl thinks of his hand on Carol’s throat and flexes his fingers.

The gun is beside the bed, loaded, within reach of the sleeping man. But he doesn’t wake as Daryl picks it up, weighing it in his hand, turning the barrel to point at Ed’s face. His finger caresses the trigger.I won’t ask you to become that. He releases the breath he has been holding and turns his back on Ed, taking the key out the door when he reaches it, locking it behind him as he leaves.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

He sleeps on the floor, fitfully, for two hours, and wakes while it is still dark. The shower is running on the other side of the wall, and he jerks upright, one hand reaching for the edge of the bed. The sheet is cool. Sophia lies curved around where Carol’s feet must have been, one arm flung across the empty space beside her. Daryl stands up, his vision whiting out for a second as his head throbs. He is parched and bilious, and afraid of how long Carol might have been standing on slippery tiles under cold water.

The bathroom door is closed. He rests the palm of one hand against it, his head bent and his ear to the wood.

“Carol?” The tip of his forefinger brushes back and forth across the door. “You okay?”

The water shuts off abruptly.

“Yes.” Her voice is hoarse, and he closes his eyes, seeing Ed’s hands on the back of her head as he thrust into her throat. “Thank you, I’m—I needed to wash.” The last word is muffled.

“‘Kay.” He doesn’t move.

“Daryl?” She is nearer the door. It hurts to listen to her speak.

“Yeah?”

“Ed, is he—” The unfiltered fear in her voice makes him draw back from the door, his hand sliding down the plywood.

“Locked him in his room,” Daryl replies. “Took the gun.”

There is soft friction against the door, as though she has bumped it or leant against the wood.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He nods, though she cannot see him, and she says nothing more. He rests his back against the wall opposite the door, his eyes closed, and listens to her drying and dressing herself, the sharp hiss of her breath, an abbreviated whimper of pain that makes him start forward before he slumps back against the plaster. His brain is blinded by shock, caught in that moment every afternoon when the dappled light in the woods is both too bright and too dark to illuminate anything at all. Her fingers grazing Ed’s thigh, her throat distended, her stomach muscles taut with tension. The bare skin of her back beneath Daryl’s hand, the knowledge, which he can only face now, incoherently, that she trusted him enough to stand naked before him, just a blanket between them. The round of her hip, the swell of her ass just visible—

They need to decide what to do about Ed.

The bathroom door opens. She is wearing the same clothes as earlier, sweatpants and a T-shirt, her arm back in the sling. He is aware, as he was not earlier, that she does not have a bra on, the fabric of the T-shirt damp and clinging where she hasn’t managed to dry herself properly. The sweatpants sit low on her hips. In the hand of her good arm, she holds the candle. So close to her face, it reveals the deep red imprint of Ed’s fingers on her throat. Daryl reaches out and takes the light, as much to allow those marks to disappear into shadow as to unburden her.

She has somehow managed to wash her hair, the scent of grapefruit sweet and sharp, water dripping down the sides of her face and neck and soaking into the edge of her shirt. He frowns a little, and she touches a droplet on her jaw self-consciously.

“Didn’t manage to dry it.” Her mouth pulls, on one side, into a smile, but she has started to shiver, and the wounds on her face look worse than they did two hours ago, more swollen, the blood only halfway to dry. He scowls, her frailty wearing on him. Holding her left him feeling abraded, his skin raw and exposed.

He shoves the candle back into her hand and slips past her into the bathroom, snatching up the threadbare towel slung over the side of the bath. She watches him, but when he goes to her and raises the towel, she quails, her pupils flaring in fright. He lowers his hands, makes his voice quiet.

“Gonna dry your hair.”

She nods, tears in her eyes, and stands meekly as he lifts the towel again.

“Sorry,” she rasps. “When he—it leaves me a bit…”

His throat closes. Beneath the towel, her skull feels delicate as an eggshell. His fingertips dab gingerly at her hair, following the outline of a bump where she hit her head, and she stands patiently, still shivering. When he has soaked up the excess water, he tosses the towel back over the edge of the bath. She stays where she is. The nape of her neck is striped with fingermarks, and there is a small cut in the curve where it meets her shoulder.

“We gotta decide,” Daryl says thickly. “‘Bout him.”

She nods, a stiff, spasmodic movement, and he remembers the sweater he pulled off the rack yesterday in the store. It feels like days ago, Ed’s hand on the dainty bras and panties, the haze of dust in the late afternoon sun. Carol limps down the hallway, and he follows, going to his pack near the front door when they reach the living room. He digs in it until his fingers touch the softness of the sweater. When he stands up with it in his hand, Carol is struggling to open the window with one arm. He hurries over and does it for her, cool air drifting into the stuffy house.

“Thanks. The smell.” Her breath hisses, her shivering worse. He holds out the sweater wordlessly, and she raises her eyes as far as the garment in his hand, puzzled.

“Warm you up,” he says bluntly. She reaches out and brushes her fingertips over the wool. The strap on her broken finger is grubby and fraying, damp from the shower. There is a flicker of wonder in her expression, but then her hand falls away.

“I shouldn’t,” she says quietly. “It’s too—it’s too pretty. Ed won’t—it’ll make him angry when he sees it. Angrier.”

He stares at her, the grey spikes of hair starting to dry properly, the gash that opens across her cheek like a mouth, pink and wet.

“Who gives a sh*t what he thinks? You ain’t gotta be afraid of him anymore,” he says fiercely, and shifts on his feet, closer to her. She stiffens, her expression wary, her eyes on his chest. Fury uncoils in his belly. “He tries to lay a finger on you, I’ll cut his f*ckin’ throat an’ let him bleed out. He’s gone. Today. Or we are.”

She blinks, frozen in place, and he holds the sweater by the arms and drapes it around her shoulders. It is better than nothing, and when she looks up, her eyes reflect the blue of the wool. He clears his throat and crosses to the couch, flinging himself down at one end. She sits at the other end, stroking the cuff of one sweater sleeve, lifting it to rub the wool against the skin of her cheek. She winces at the contact, and he looks away. He is jittery with lack of sleep, with trying to order his thoughts so that he can consider more than what he saw in this living room last night. More than the way he has already failed her.

“If it’s today,” she says. “He can go. Not us. I—if we could stay another day, it would help. My arm isn’t good for much right now.” She glances at him, and down at her lap.

“You care if he takes the Jeep?” There is a truck in town, outside the bank, a black Chevy. Large enough in the back to take Daryl’s bike. Double cab. It’ll burn more gas than is smart, assuming they can even find some, but until Carol can drive, it’ll do for the three of them and their luggage.

Carol shakes her head. “He can have it. And some food.” Her fingers ghost across the cut in her lip. “We have to give him his gun back.”

“Nah.” Daryl’s answer is immediate. He leans forward, picking at some dry skin on his palm, his voice louder than he intended. “Ain’t handin’ him a gun while he’s anywhere near you.”

“We can’t make him go out there unarmed.” She coughs. “Alone.”

Daryl turns to look at her. She doesn’t flinch from the disbelief in his gaze, from the anger that follows it.

“He’s a sick f*ck,” Daryl spits. “A goddamn monster. He doesn’ deserve to—”

“He’s a person,” Carol whispers.

“Listento yourself. Look in a damn mirror.”

He stares hotly at her neck, at her arm slung across her body. He wants to tell her about what Ed said in the store, but he isn’t sure he can form the words. His anger is old, as much a part of him as the scars on his back, and confronting the shame in Carol’s face is like witnessing his mother's shame when he was a boy. But Carol doesn’t turn away, or yell at him, or curl up and cry. Her mouth is unsteady for a second, her eyes widening with hurt, but when she speaks her voice is calm.

“If we send him away unarmed, we might as well kill him ourselves.” Her voice scrapes, and she coughs again. Daryl remembers the sound of her choking on Ed’s co*ck, the gleam of her shoulders above the surface of the river, the way she cried when she saw Sophia on his bed. Weariness replaces his rage.

“Fine,” he says, pushing his hair off his face. “But he gets a knife. Not the gun.”

Ed, as far as Daryl can tell, doesn’t even know how to hold a knife. Still, if he is smart, he might manage to defend himself against walkers. Carol is silent for a moment.

“Okay,” she says at last. He wants her to stop speaking, to allow the inflammation in her throat to go down, so that he is not reminded of what he saw every time she opens her mouth. So that he does not have to hear, as well as see, what she is suffering. Disgusted with himself, he leans back and closes his eyes. The movement makes him lightheaded. In an hour or so, it will be dawn.

xxxx

She doesn’t sleep again. Pain undulates through her arm, winding around the bones, burrowing into the muscles. She gets back into Daryl’s bed because he tells her to, with an impatience that makes her tearful, and because she doesn’t want Sophia to wake up alone. Daryl sits with his back against the nightstand, biting at a thumbnail, the sound of it oddly comforting. She wishes she could bring herself to touch him; wishes she believed he wouldn’t mind. He is angry with her for pitying Ed, and she is ashamed of doing so. She thinks of the tiny gold cross somewhere in her bag, the necklace she took off when Sophia went missing, and wishes she were stronger, braver, more ruthless.

The room is grey by the time Sophia wakes, the curtains backlit by the first glimmer of sunrise.

“Daryl?” The girl’s voice is drowsy. She sighs, her muscles trembling as she stretches. “Mama?” She sits up quickly.

Carol closes her eyes for a second, steadying herself, and then meets her daughter’s gaze. They are past the point of conversation on mornings like this, but Sophia’s mouth opens and closes again, her eyes welling up as she looks down at her mother. She glances at Daryl, and back at Carol.

“I’m okay, sweetheart,” Carol rasps. It is the only thing left to say. Her child shifts on the mattress, crawling into the narrow gap between Carol’s side and the wall, nestling there silently with her face against Carol’s shoulder. It throbs. Carol turns her head and kisses Sophia’s mussed blonde hair, warm with sleep and smelling faintly of Daryl’s bed.

Overhead, footsteps cross the floorboards. Daryl gets to his feet in a single, graceful movement, and goes to the door, his hand on the knob by the time the main bedroom door starts to rattle on its hinges.

“Be back in a minute,” Daryl says, his face tight.

“Wait.” Carol pushes herself into a seated position and swings her legs off the bed. “I need to tell him.”

Daryl starts to shake his head, frowning. Behind Carol, Sophia has sat up.

“He’s my husband,” Carol says simply. Daryl bites his lip, his fingers tightening on the doorknob, his face struggling between the wild look he wore earlier and one of resignation. She doesn’t wait for him to decide; the choice is hers to make. But as she stands, she sways, nausea rolling through her, Sophia’s hand grasping for hers.

“Mama?” The girl’s voice is sharp and anxious. There is a loud thud from upstairs, muffled words, and then a shout.

“Carol! Let me the f*ck outta here!”

Daryl is in front of her, his breathing quickening, his hand on her unhurt shoulder, steadying her. “You don’t have to do this,” he murmurs.

“Dumb f*ckin’c*nt!”

“I do,” she replies, and turns to Sophia. “Wait here. I’m going to talk to your father.”

The girl’s face twists, her eyes blurry with tears.

“I’ll be there too.” Daryl crouches next to the bed and looks up at Sophia. His manner is so kind, so obviously tempered for her benefit, that Carol wants to shut her ears so she can keep her composure. “Hear me? He ain’t touchin’ your momma. Not without goin’ through me.” He swallows, hanging his head for a moment. There is guilt in his voice. He looks up at the child again. “‘Kay?”

She nods. Her hands are clutching the bedclothes, and she stares down at them as her mother heads for the door. Daryl straightens up slowly, hesitating before he follows Carol.

Ed is breaking things when they reach the landing, yelling about his missing gun. Carol’s progress up the stairs is slow. In the light of day, the living room looks worse, the blood darker, the trajectory of Ed’s violence clearer. Daryl bends and picks up his knife, still lying where he dropped it, and it stays in his hand as they climb the stairs, listening to furniture splinter in the main bedroom as Ed rages.

Daryl moves in front of her, taking the key out of his pocket, and looks back. She thinks of how he shook last night in response to her trembling, how his body answered hers. Such a strange comfort, to be met within her shock rather than pulled out of it. She gazes at him levelly and nods.

The air that seeps out of the bedroom is thick with the stench of alcohol and sweat. Ed is in his boxers and a shirt, and he has been taking drawers from the dresser against the wall, throwing them at the door. They grind and scrape across the floor as Daryl pushes the door open. Ed sees Carol first and comes towards her, snarling, but she doesn’t even have time to recoil before Daryl is between them, knife spinning in his hand. Ed halts, glaring at them both.

“The f*ck is this?” He looks from Daryl to Carol. “You brainlessbitch. When I get my hands on you—”

She blinks, and Daryl’s fist is around Ed’s shirt, the tip of his knife against Ed’s neck.

“Gimme an excuse,” Daryl breathes. He has never seemed so dangerous. Ed’s throat works with difficulty, his eyes rolling as he tries to see the knife. “Threaten her again, f*cker.”

Ed lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender, and Daryl releases him, staying at his side. The older man’s face is puce. Carol watches him rub his neck.

“You’re leaving here today,” she tells him when he is focused on her once more. “With the car and some food and a knife.” Her throat burns. “And you aren’t ever going to see Sophia or me again.”

Her husband stares at her, the colour fading from his face, and she looks back at him. Every nerve, every inch of her skin, is alert with fear, with the instinct of a wounded animal to cower from its attacker. But she makes herself stand still and lifts her shoulders.

“She’s mydaughter,” Ed says, the outrage in his voice undercut by perplexity.

“You’re sick, Ed.” The words tremble on her tongue. “And I won’t let you hurt her.” Her voice fades to a whisper. “Or me. Not anymore.”

His mouth forms the words again, soundlessly:she’s my daughter.And then his face shifts from disbelief to loathing, and he lunges for her.

She is sure, for a second, that Daryl will stab him; but Daryl’s knife is shoved in his belt, and it is his fist that strikes Ed’s throat with a sickening crunch before he makes it even a foot closer to Carol. The larger man topples. Daryl is on him instantly, straddling him, hitting his face over and over, Ed’s legs thrashing as he tries to dislodge his opponent. Carol presses herself against the wall of the landing, shrinking from the sound of bone against bone, the fine spray of blood that arcs from Ed’s nose as it breaks. He makes a gargling sound, cut short as Daryl strikes his jaw, and he grabs at the younger man’s sides, trying to dislodge him, heaving himself to the right until they both roll over. Ed tries to use their momentum to get Daryl underneath him, but the younger man is too quick, kneeing Ed’s crotch and scrambling away, dragging one of the broken drawers between them. Daryl is on his feet while Ed’s hands are still shielding his face from the splintered wood. The younger man looks down at Carol’s husband for a moment, and as Ed grabs for his ankles, Daryl sidesteps his hands and kicks him in the ribs, once and then again, with a savagery Carol can feel in her own sides. Ed grunts, scrabbling at the floorboards to haul himself away, but Daryl follows him, aiming a final kick at his gut as he curls into a ball. The man on the floor gags and retches, thin yellow vomit spilling through the blood at the corner of his mouth.

Daryl leans over Ed and waits for him to stop heaving.

“Get dressed an’ pack your sh*t,” he pants. There is blood speckling the backs of his hands. Carol stares at it, aware suddenly that she is crouched on the floor against the skirting, her knees pulled up to the arm against her belly. Daryl kicks the broken drawers out the way and leaves Ed, pulling the door shut and locking it behind him. He starts when he sees Carol, and closes the distance between them in a heartbeat, his hands hovering at her upper arms, his eyes searching her face.

“You get hurt?” he asks, and she realises he thinks she approached them while they were fighting, got caught somehow in the crossfire. She shakes her head, and he exhales, his face exhausted for a moment. She cannot tell him what she needs from him, so she takes it, resting her good hand on his forearm, using it to leverage herself as her back slides up the wall. His fingers close on her upper arms, gentler on the injured side, and he helps her to her feet. She doesn’t let go of him once she is standing, her eyes on his face, his body trapping her against the wall. Something changes in his demeanour, something she can’t decipher; she is too grateful for his proximity, for the sense of being embraced even though he is only holding her by the arms. She bends her head slowly, her forehead coming to rest on his collarbone, and he makes a low, rough sound in his throat, takes a shuddering breath. His cheek grazes the crown of her head and then he moves back, still holding her upright but opening a space between them, his eyes avoiding hers.

xxxx

Daryl goes to put gas in the Jeep, driving it down to the house from the gas station and parking it in the driveway, so they can send Ed on his way as soon as he is packed. They eat breakfast in the living room, canned peaches and a bag of flaked almonds, Carol letting hers soak in the peach juice and mashing them with the back of a spoon. His hands and arms scrubbed clean, Daryl eats quickly, and then sorts through their food stores, dividing them between Ed and the rest of the group, tossing Ed’s in a box and packing it in the Jeep. He has put the sheath back on his belt and the knife inside it; he will give it to Ed when the man leaves.

The gas shortage preoccupies him as they wait for Ed to be ready. With what they gathered yesterday, Carol’s husband will not get far, and Daryl cannot escape the fear that he will make his way back here or follow them wherever they go next. Carol cannot travel for a few days, even as a passenger, not without a measure of pain that Daryl will not accept.

His knuckles are raw from hitting Ed, and Sophia stares at his hands when he comes to sit on the couch, aware that his pacing is unnerving her. Carol is lying in his room, and not being able to keep an eye on her makes him anxious; but he understood, when she limped from the living room, that she didn’t want Sophia to watch her struggling. And so he stayed with the girl, listening to Ed’s uneven footsteps overhead.

“Is he hurt bad?” Her voice is a whisper. He chews the inside of his cheek, and looks down, flexing his fingers.

“Not as bad as your—not as bad as he should be.” She is a child, and Ed is her father, but Daryl will not pretend forgiveness where he feels none. He peers at her, and she reaches out and touches a finger to one of the grazes on his knuckles. He snatches his hand away, his stomach knotting, and she leans back, tucking her hands between her knees.

“Sorry,” she says. He glares at her, and her lower lip trembles. Upstairs, something heavy hits the floor, and Sophia’s eyes flick to the ceiling. Carol explained to her, when they came downstairs, that Ed would be leaving. The child only nodded, hugging her mother carefully, saying nothing to suggest she was either pleased or distressed by the news. Daryl tries to smooth his face into a less hostile expression. His irritation at the girl is like sand under his skin. She and her mother both seem starved for something he doesn’t know how to provide, so traumatised by their years with Ed that Daryl is hopelessly inadequate to the task of being a friend to them. He shifts uncomfortably, thinking of the moment upstairs when Carol rested her head against his collarbone, seeking comfort: the citrus scent of her hair and its softness against his cheek, the rush of desire he felt at just that contact, in that unlikely instant. He cannot be what she needs right now when he responds to her like that.

Ed bangs on the door of his bedroom, and Daryl springs to his feet.

“Go to your momma,” he says tersely, and Sophia obeys. Daryl grabs his crossbow from the corner and goes to fetch Ed.

Carol and her daughter are at the front door when he brings Ed down, the black duffel bag over the older man’s shoulder, his face swollen as grotesquely as his wife’s. He is sullen, silent as Daryl gestures towards the stairs with his bow, and he ignores the woman and child until he reaches them. As Daryl unlocks the front door, one eye on Ed, Carol stands with her arm around Sophia, looking expressionlessly at her husband.

“Wish I could say I was gonna miss you,” Ed says, and tilts his head to one side, running his eyes over Carol’s body. “Only thing I’m gonna miss is f*ckin’ you till you bleed. Hearin’ that mouth call me daddy.”

Sophia turns her face into Carol’s side, and Daryl grabs Ed by the arm, too sickened to speak, too aware of the way Carol is shaken by Ed’s words. She lifts her chin defiantly, but her eyes swim with tears and a tremor begins in her hands. Daryl tries to catch her eye, but she will not look at him, and colour seeps into her face between the bruises.

“Keys an’ food’re in the car, asshole.” Daryl yanks Ed forward and shoves him in the direction of the Jeep. Ed opens the back door and slings his bag onto the seat before he turns back to Daryl. There is maybe a foot of space between them, Daryl’s crossbow held across his chest in readiness. The horizon is peach pink and gold, gaudy above roofs and between houses. Ed looks at Daryl expectantly.

“You gonna give me that knife?”

The door of the house squeaks, Carol and Sophia’s feet scuffing the cement of the step. Daryl shifts his bow to one hand as he reaches for the sheath, tugging it from his belt.

He feels the pressure first, the sheer force of something entering his thigh as though his flesh has turned momentarily to liquid. The pain follows, a burning that begins inside his leg and works its way outwards and upwards, the stink of cordite stinging his nostrils as he stumbles backwards, a high-pitched scream tearing through the yard. It isn’t him. He drops in silence, his crossbow making a loud crack against the bricks, his left leg too heavy to move, locked in an iron cast of agony.

On his back, he can see the sky better, the rose gold of the sun melting into orange. Carol is saying his name, a whisper at his ear though she is nowhere near him, the syllables so sweet in her mouth. Above him there is a flock of birds, startled from a telephone wire, maybe, or a roof ridge, their bodies vanishing like smoke as they turn. Sophia sobs, loud and frightened,Daryl Daryl please Daryl,and the world thuds back into being: the hot weight of his bloodsoaked jeans, the fire in his leg, the sound of Ed’s boots crossing to the front door.

Daryl tries to push himself up on his elbows, but a hangover and lack of sleep act against whatever in him isn’t crippled by pain, and he can barely lift his head from the dirt. There is a cacophony, Ed and Sophia and Carol all shouting, the girl’s voice more terrified than Daryl has ever heard it. He inches his hand across the ground towards the edge of the bricks, where his crossbow lies.

“Get in the goddamn car!” Ed yells, and there is a scuffle near Daryl’s feet, the clunk of something hitting the metal side of the Jeep. Sophia’s hysterical sobbing is muffled suddenly as a car door slams.

“Sophia!” Carol’s voice severs the din, her daughter’s name splitting it with such dread that Daryl moans in response. Turning his head, he tries to roll over his injured leg towards the bricks, and digs his fingers into the dirt, gasping at the pulse of pain that radiates from the bullet wound, the rush of blood over his thigh. He doesn’t hear Carol’s limping run towards Ed until she is already past him, croakingno no no. Ed laughs, and Daryl lifts his head from the ground in time to see him catch Carol as she gets to him, his hand gripping her shoulder as he holds the muzzle of the gun under her chin. She reaches helplessly for the back window, towards Sophia’s face behind the glass.

The walker is a man, wiry and strong when he was alive, his hair in a stringy braid down his back. He wears pyjama pants and a bathrobe, the towelling stained, and on his chest is a tattoo of a wolf, howling towards a moon that perhaps lies out of sight, on his shoulder. Daryl sees all this with immense clarity, because the walker approaches from further down the street, arriving in the driveway behind the car as Daryl tries again to roll over. It is easier to ignore the pain this time—he is ready for it, gritting his teeth and whining through it. Ed is hissing something at Carol, words Daryl doesn’t want to hear, detailing her faults one last time. The walker stumbles against the trunk of the car and drags a hand along the side as he heads for them, their noise distracting him from the scent of Daryl’s blood.

Sophia sees him next, her voice rising in pitch, and then Ed reacts, grunting in fright. Daryl twists his head frantically, looking for Carol. Ed is fumbling with the gun, losing his grip as he tries to swivel so Carol shields him from the dead man, and he drops the weapon as Daryl’s hand closes on his crossbow. Ed holds Carol between himself and the walker, its claw-like hands tearing at the back of her T-shirt, its mouth yawning open.

Daryl rolls onto his back once more, the bow in his hands, as Carol kicks, fighting against Ed’s hold, her foot hitting the walker’s shin and slowing its reach for the bare skin of her neck.

“Carol,duck!”

Afterwards, it horrifies him to remember this moment, the certainty with which he lifted the bow and fired: certainty that she would hear and listen, that she would trust him enough to obey without hesitation. He fires into the back of the walker’s head, the bolt entering its skull at an angle. All three of the figures above Daryl collapse, Ed at the bottom, Carol trapped between him and the walker. Daryl drops the bow and gets up, somehow, crying out in pain, throwing himself onto the walker and wrestling the heavy corpse clear of Carol.

She is huddled beneath it, covering her head, her injured arm loose from the sling. Daryl slumps to the ground beside her.

“Talk to me.Carol.” The words are clumsy, difficult to shape. His heart beats in his thigh, around the dense pressure of the bullet. Carol opens her eyes and scrambles off Ed, her breathing pitched high and desperate, her hand on Daryl’s shoulder as she kneels beside him. The car door clicks open.

“Daryl. Oh God.” He thinks she must mean Sophia, because the terror in her voice is the kind he only heard when the child was missing. Her hand moves to his face, cupping his cheek.

“The—gun,” Daryl says. The sky is turning blue, pink-edged clouds emerging. He shifts his gaze to Carol. “Get the—gun.”

Ed coughs. Carol’s face folds inwards for a second as she glances at Daryl’s leg.

“Gun,” he whispers again. Ed will shoot them all if he gets the chance.

“Sophia has it,” Carol says, and Daryl turns his head. The girl is standing there with a pistol in her hand—a gun he’s never seen before, found, perhaps, in one of the houses he and Ed raided yesterday. It hangs, shaking, from Sophia’s grasp, and he drags his eyes to hers.

“He’s bleeding,” she says loudly and unevenly. “Daddy’s bleeding.”

Carol gets to her feet, cradling her arm against her belly, and steps closer to Ed. As he follows her with his eyes, Daryl glimpses the other man’s face. Blood is pooling beneath his head from a wound in his neck, where the bolt passed through the walker’s mouth and pierced Ed’s jugular as Carol ducked. Daryl goes cold. Red belches from the hole, Ed’s body twitching. As Carol stops beside him, he tries to speak. A trickle of blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. She gazes down at him, and Daryl pushes himself up on one shaky elbow, afraid Ed is hiding another weapon.

“Listen to me,” Carol tells Ed, and waits, as though for him to pay attention. A moment passes before she continues. “The only good thing you ever did was give me Sophia. And then you tried to take her from me.” Her voice is almost tender. She bends slowly, lopsidedly, and picks up a bolt from the ground, popped from the quiver on Daryl’s bow as it fell. She keeps her eyes on her husband’s face. “I’m going to survive, Ed. Me, Sophia—we’re both going to survive.”

Ed coughs, a mist of blood smudging the air above his mouth. Carol holds the bolt where he can see it, and brings it to his neck, the blood dividing around the tip as she rests it against his wound. His arms jerk, his fingers a panicked flurry against the ground, and Carol slides the bolt into his throat, smoothly, firmly, pushes it in and keeps pushing, until Ed’s back arches just off the ground and he gives a thin, spluttering scream. Carol’s eyes remain fixed on his until the noise ends abruptly.

Overhead, as Daryl crumples backwards, his head hitting the dirt, the birds wheel as though waiting for something. He takes a shallow breath, his eyes drifting shut. Carol says his name, her hands on his leg, her voice a sob, and the birds swerve away, satisfied.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

“His belt, Sophia. Help me with his belt.” Between Carol’s fingers, through the denim of Daryl’s jeans, blood wells, spilling over her knuckles. Sophia drops to her knees on Daryl’s other side. “Put the gun down, honey. Carefully.”

Her daughter’s eyes are huge, dark with shock as she looks at Carol dumbly. Slowly, she lays the pistol next to her in the dirt. Carol points with her chin at Daryl’s belt buckle.

“Undo it. Quickly.” Her injured arm is burning, the shoulder starting to wobble as she tries to keep pressure on Daryl’s wound. “You need to focus, Sophia.Focus.”

The last word is loud and sharp, hurting her throat, a reminder to herself as well as her daughter. It works. The girl’s fingers move faster, unbuckling the worn leather belt and tugging it out from the loops and from under Daryl.

“Good girl. Now work it around his thigh, above my hands.”

Daryl shudders and moans as Sophia tries to move his leg. His face is grey. The child shunts the tongue of the belt under him and pulls it up.

“Take over from me,” Carol says, and takes the ends of the belt from her daughter, fastening it around his thigh, pulling it as tight as she can. Daryl turns his face towards her, a spasm of pain crossing it, his hand twitching near her knees. She sits back on her heels and wipes her face, tears blurring her vision; but in doing so, she smears her skin with Daryl’s blood, her hands slick with it. Her legs and sides ache, and her shoulder shivers and shivers in the socket.

“We have to—get him inside,” she says to Sophia, fighting a wave of dizziness.

“What must I do?” Sophia’s hands still rest on Daryl’s thigh, no longer pressing down on the wound, but lying lightly on the soiled denim.

“Help me wake him up.” Carol looks down at him, her chest constricting at how white and sunken his face is, the blades of his cheekbones sharper than she has ever seen them. She bends over him, her hands on his chest. “Daryl, wake up. We need to get you inside and we can’t—we—you have to wake up.”

He doesn’t respond. Carol says his name again, her voice breaking between the syllables, and Sophia’s forehead bumps hers as the child leans suddenly forward, one hand turning Daryl’s head so he is facing up into the brightening sunlight.

“Daryl,wake up. Mama needs you,” she says urgently, loudly enough that Carol glances fearfully around in case the noise has drawn another walker. When she looks down again, Daryl is blinking, grimacing, his breathing growing rapid as he tries to cling to consciousness. Carol waits for him to see her, his pupils expanding in terror, his lips parting.

“You have to try and stand up,” she says quickly. His throat works and his eyes skate over her face and neck, down her chest. He sounds close to hyperventilating, but it isn’t his leg that is responsible. His mouth opens again, his hand grazing her knee, and she understands. Cupping his cheek so he will focus on her eyes once more, she speaks as clearly as she can. “I’m fine, Daryl. Me and Sophia, we’re fine. But you’re injured.”

His eyelids flutter, a deep, articulated breath shaking through him. She eases her good arm behind his neck, telling Sophia to help her raise him into a seated position. They loop his arms around their own necks, and before he can slump forward over his lap, they start to lift him. He is heavy, solidly muscular in a way Carol hasn’t fully appreciated until now, his bicep cold and clammy against her neck. As he gains purchase on the dirt with one foot and starts to haul his wounded leg up, he exhales in a sobbing rush, his fingers fumbling at Carol’s arm. She turns to look at him and he drops his face into her hair, shoulders heaving with effort, his breath hot against her scalp. On his other side, Sophia reaches across and clutches his shirt in her free hand, trying to retain her balance.

Their progress towards the front door is so slow, and so difficult, that Carol isn’t sure they will make it. The foot of Daryl’s injured leg drags, fresh blood oozing out of his thigh below the tourniquet, and by the time they reach the step he is crying silently, every breath a muted groan, his head lolling. Soaked in his sweat and her own, Carol is aware only of her injuries and his torment, the shuddering of his shoulders matching the pulsing ache in her arm and sides, in her cheek and jaw.

They get him as far as the couch, and he collapses onto it, retching as they lift his leg onto the cushions. Immediately, Carol limps back outside for the knife and crossbow, and the gun Ed used on Daryl. Sophia locks the front door behind her as she returns. The first aid kit is still on the coffee table from last night, and Carol fetches water from the kitchen, scrubbing her hands and filling bottles, carrying them awkwardly in the crook of her arm. Daryl has passed out, one arm hanging off limply off the side of the couch.

He is filthy. His jeans are sodden with blood, his shirt damp with sweat, with walker blood and brain matter. Sophia crouches next to him, and Carol pulls Daryl’s knife from the sheath.

“Mama?” The child’s voice is full of fear.

“We have to get his jeans and shirt off. Otherwise there’s a risk of the wound getting infected.” Her throat is so sore that every word tastes metallic, and her hand shakes as she tries to hold the knife comfortably. “Undo his shirt buttons, Sophia.”

Sawing through wet denim requires more strength than she would have imagined, though the knife is sharp enough. She cuts away the fabric around the wound and then severs the jeans right up to the waistband, undoing the belt tourniquet and pulling the separated pieces of pants away from the injured leg. The flesh around the bullet wound is angry and inflamed, but there is only a small trickle of fresh blood from the hole now. Carol cleans quickly, dousing the thigh with disinfectant and wiping it, cleaning the belt before she refastens it above the wound. Only then does she look properly at the rest of Daryl’s leg.

The scars are old enough to be faded, sparse blonde hair overgrowing them. But they are big enough and numerous enough not to be missed, especially when Carol works his other leg free of what’s left of his jeans. Marks made by a belt buckle, by a switch. On his inner thigh, where the skin is soft and white, where his boxers have ridden up, a cluster of cigarette burns. She is so shaken by them that she can do nothing but stare for a long moment, her hands on Daryl’s shin.

“What happened to him?”

She glances at Sophia, but the child isn’t looking at his legs. She is looking at his chest where she has just finished unbuttoning his shirt and pulled the fabric open. Carol lifts a hand to her mouth, her eyes stinging, because his chest is worse, his ribs striped with thick ridges that curve beneath him, including the one near the stitches in his crossbow injury.Reminds me of my old man. She meets Sophia’s eyes.

“That’s none of our business,” she whispers hoarsely. “Fetch a sheet for him. And a pillow.”

Later, she remembers that even in this moment, even as he lies bleeding and unconscious, she notices something else about his body: how beautiful he is, his muscles long and lean, his hips narrow and his shoulders sculpted with a symmetry and strength that belong in a museum, on the marble rendering of some Greek hero. She notices how the hair on his chest darkens below his bellybutton, disappearing beneath the waistband of his faded blue boxers, and she notices the tufts of fine, light hair under his arms. She does not linger on any of it; but she notices.

“How are you going to get the bullet out?” Sophia has covered his top half with a sheet, eased a pillow under his head. Carol looks down at her trembling hands.

“I’m not,” she says quietly. “It’s too risky. I don’t know how deep it is or where it’s stuck, and my hands, I can’t—I can’t—I don’t want him to bleed any worse.” Her vision blurs, and Sophia puts a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Mama,” she whispers, but her voice is unsteady.

“I’m just going to clean it as well as I can.” Carol swallows and pulls herself together. “But leave it open for a little longer. I don’t trust myself to stitch it.”

“I can try.” Sophia presses her lips together determinedly, and Carol shakes her head.

“I’ll do it later,” she says. “I’ll be fine once I’ve rested a little.” She tries to smile at her daughter. “Will you find something for him to eat when he wakes up, please?”

When Sophia has gone to the kitchen, Carol takes scissors from the med kit and folds back the sheet over Daryl’s side, finding the line of stitches Hershel did days ago. The skin around them is dry, healed, and she smoothes her thumb over it before she starts snipping at the thread, remembering Daryl’s wariness when she changed the bandage for him. He must have peeled the last dressing off a couple of days back, or it fell off and he didn’t want to ask her to replace it. Her heart turns over, and she rests her fingertips on his ribs for just a second.

She cuts the first stitch, sliding the blade of the scissors carefully under the suture, gritting her teeth against the quivering of her hand. As she prepares to snip the second stitch, he moans, shrinking against the back of the couch, his eyes still closed but his hands flailing weakly at his side, as if to cover himself. As if to brush away her touch.

“I need to take out your stitches,” she says softly, and strokes the back of his hand with her fingertips. “I’ll be quick, Daryl. You’ll be more comfortable when they’re out.”

He flinches, his hand jerking away from hers, and his eyes half open, hazy blue and bloodshot. Leaning forward, she speaks again, as gently as she can manage with so hoarse a voice.

“You’re okay, Daryl. I’m just taking out your stitches. I’ve cleaned your leg.”

It is the wrong thing to say. She sees the moment he realises he is nearly naked, the panic in his eyes, the spasm of his limbs and the pain that follows. Carol, so wrung out that she can barely stay upright, puts the scissors down and takes his face in her hands. He stares up at her, and the corners of her mouth turn down at his expression, at his confusion and fear. She brings her face so close to his that she can feel his breath puff against her skin, and she holds his gaze.

“Okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’ll leave them for now. I’ll leave them, Daryl.” She feels some of the tension drain from his body, and lets her forehead touch his. “Rest now. Rest now.”

His hand brushes her waist, fumbles across her back, the weight of it drawing her down to his chest, and she succumbs without hesitation, sighing, needing it as much as he does. She hides her face in his neck, her torso bent diagonally across his, and he holds her in a clumsy embrace. There is only her shirt between them, and at first his heart pounds beneath her hand, his muscles twitching, each breath an almost-gasp. But gradually, as she lies motionless, as she ignores the scar tissue under her palm and the flutter of his pulse against her forehead, he starts to relax. And, finally, sleep takes him, his arm slipping from her back, his hand thudding to the floor.

xxxx

The lucky cat is wearing a red collar and a blue bandana, and its raised paw is not waving. The paint on its tiny gold bell is glossy, its pale green eyes disinterested and yet somehow benevolent. Daryl blinks at it. His eyes are scratchy and dry, and his left leg feels huge and hot, a dull ache in his thigh extending to his hip and calf. He is on his back, his head turned towards the coffee table, his neck stiff.

The light in the room is butter yellow. On the ceiling, when he straightens his head, he can see the sharp glint of sunlight off the goldfish in the lucky cat’s paw, a small oval of brightness. He remembers hands on his skin, and shudders, moving an arm to see if he is covered. There is a sheet over him, light cotton, smooth against the uneven flesh of his chest and thighs. He holds onto it in one fist, as though hiding himself now could undo what Carol has already seen.

“Carol.” Her name comes from within him, unbidden, his fingers working on the sheet. “Carol.”

“I’m here. Sophia.” The girl’s face appears over the back of the couch, shadows under her eyes, her hair lank. Her voice is soft and anxious. “You’re awake.”

“Carol,” he whispers. The girl comes around the couch, and looks down at him, twisting her hands.

“She’s sleeping,” she says. “She was hurting so much and she was sick and then I told her to sleep.” Her eyes glimmer. “You have to drink some water and eat.”

It comes back to him in a rush: the pressure in his thigh, the screaming, the greasy braid down the walker’s back swinging as he seized Carol’s shirt.The only good thing you ever did was give me Sophia.Daryl closes his eyes.f*ck f*ck f*ck.

“She’s okay.” Sophia has read his thoughts. “That walker didn’t get her.”

Daryl opens his eyes again. The room is fuzzy for a moment. The muzzle of the gun under Carol’s chin.

“He’s dead.” He remembers a swirl of dark wings far above him, Carol’s hands on his face. Sophia nods.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

“What—day is it?” he asks. He coughs, and the girl picks up a bottle of water and opens it.

“You’ve been—you’ve been asleep since yesterday morning. When Daddy—when you—.” She stops.

He pushes himself up a little, keeping the sheet pulled against his chest, wincing as his leg moves. Taking the bottle, he drinks thirstily, until Sophia touches his bare shoulder. Recoiling, he glares at her, and she flushes.

“Mama said to sip it. Don’t drink too fast.” There is a pleading note in her voice which arouses guilt in him at once. He grunts, grudgingly, and takes a slower sip.Mama said.

“Where’s she sleepin’?” he asks. “How long’s she been sleepin’ for?”

“In your bed.” Sophia sits down at the edge of the armchair and opens a granola bar for him, handing it over. “She’s been asleep for a while.” Her voice cracks a little. “Since some time in the night, I don’t know. All day today.”

He stares at her, freckles stark against her skin, her lips chapped, and he remembers walking out of the forest as a kid, nine days missing, his absence noticed by no one. He clears his throat.

“‘You slept too?”

She nods. “Before she did.”

They look at each other in silence, the granola bar in Daryl’s hand.

“‘M sorry,” he says at last. “‘Bout your—that he—” He isn’t sorry Ed is dead. But he pities this child for having had to survive Ed, in a way that makes him uncomfortable; pities her with a reflexive empathy that he wishes he didn’t feel.

“I’m not,” she says, and for once her eyes are dry. She looks years older than she is for a moment, her expression defiant, her voice cold. “I’mnotsorry. I wish—” The hardness melts from her, and she is a kid again, her hands moving in a nervous flutter in her lap. “I wish he’d died sooner,” she whispers.

Daryl looks down at the sheet over his legs. There is a small patch of blood where the bullet wound has oozed against the cotton. He is afraid to look at the injury, afraid to assess, as he must, how long it will be before he is of any use again.

“So do I.” He meets the girl’s eyes as he says it, so she can see he means it and isn’t ashamed of it.

“Daryl?”

He twists his head, grunting softly as his leg shifts. Carol is in the doorway, swaying slightly, one hand fumbling for the doorjamb to steady herself. Sophia gets to her feet, and her mother limps slowly over, brushing the child’s bangs off her face with a casual gesture that makes Daryl’s throat hurt.

“Hey,” he says hoarsely, and reddens, because he remembers holding her, suddenly, pulling her down against his bare chest like she wouldn’t be repulsed by that, like he had any right to ask that of her.Jesus.He tries fruitlessly to recall whether he did anything else out of line.

Carol comes to sit beside the lucky cat on the coffee table, her knees wedged against the edge of the couch cushions. Despite the dark bruises on her face and the care with which she arranges her arm—no sling in sight now—there is a warmth, a relief in her eyes that makes him almost happy for a second.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, and reaches for his forearm, giving it a quick squeeze. Her cheeks flush, and he frowns self-consciously.

“Sore. Fine though.” He gestures down at his leg. “Thanks for—dealin’ with that.”

“Thanks for dealing with Ed.” There is no hesitation in her reply. “I wish you hadn’t had to.”

He looks at her in surprise.

“Only because he shot you,” she says hastily, and her shoulders sag a little, her voice slowing. “Only because you shouldn’t have had to—to—”

“Neither should you.” He fiddles with the edge of the granola bar, dried oats flaking into his lap, and he tries not to think of what Carol has seen on his body, of what she knows, now, about him. Ridiculously, his eyes sting.

“Can I check your wound?” Her voice is gentle, less rough than it was two days ago. He blinks, heat climbing the back of his neck, and shrugs, his eyes darting to Sophia.Did she see too?

Carol turns to the girl. “Why don’t you take a shower, Sophia? I’ll make us something to eat in a bit.”

The girl nods, biting her lip, glancing at Daryl before she leaves the room. Carol does nothing for a moment, her eyes on the sheet over Daryl’s thigh.

“The bullet is still in your leg,” she says at last. “The tourniquet slowed the bleeding and I was afraid of trying to find the bullet in case I made it worse again. My hands—I wasn’t sure I could—” She swallows audibly and lifts her eyes to his face. “How bad is the pain?”

He understands why she is asking, remembers one of Merle’s biker buddies lying on their couch with a bullet wound in his arm, three drunk men discussing whether an X-ray was necessary, whether they had to fund an ER visit.

“Ain’t in the bone,” he says shortly. “Reckon it’s sittin’ in the muscle.”

She exhales, her eyes closing for a second. “Okay. Good. That’s good.” But dread fills him, because he knows what her next words will be. “Can I take a look?”

He grunts, affecting a nonchalance so far from what he actually feels that he almost wants to laugh. Carol hesitates a moment longer, and then she reaches down and draws the sheet up, over his foot and his shin, over his knee. She is careful not to expose his other leg, tucking the fabric against it as she goes, but it hardly matters. As soon as the sheet over his thigh begins to move aside, Daryl seizes it, dropping the snack in his hand. Wordlessly, he clutches the cotton, covering himself, covering the switch marks and the cluster of burns where his father held him down, aged eight, a glowing cigarette so close to his crotch that Daryl pissed himself when the burning began. Carol stops in her movements, but her hand stays on the sheet, the warmth of her palm against his outer thigh.

“Your father?” she asks, her voice featherlight. He grunts an affirmative, and she caresses his leg with an ever-so-slight movement of her thumb. “Ed used to threaten to, uh, to mark my, my face.”

Daryl is so startled that his gaze jolts back to her. Her eyes are downcast. She wets her lips, her tongue moving swiftly over the cut on her lower lip.

“Not, uh, not with bruises. With—He used to hold a—” She takes a deep breath. “—a lit cigarette near my cheek or my eye. Tell me he’d—” She laughs humourlessly. “I guess he was too afraid to do it. Afraid people would, uh, say something. So he—instead he—he—”

The line of burns on her back, the thin silvery scars, the wings of her shoulder-blades cutting the surface of the river. He looks away, ashamed at the memory of his ragged breathing among the trees as he jerked off.

“He made sure I could never—” The words halt, and again she inhales deeply. “He marked me as his in other ways.”

Made sure you could never…what?The idea that she could consider herself undesirable flickers through Daryl’s mind, and he dismisses it, because surely she must know, surely, how she—how her—

Her hand moves on the sheet again, asking permission.

“You didn’t get to choose your father,” she says quietly, her voice firm suddenly. “You aren’t to blame, and you have no reason to be ashamed.”

Only later does he understand the implications for herself of what she says. In the moment, his mind goes blank, the sound of their breathing and the shower dissolving into white noise, because she folds the sheet off his thigh and then he can see herseeing him, not just the red puckered bullet wound, a glossy circle of blood drying in it, but also the cuts and burns and other scars.

She does not touch him at first. Brow furrowed, she reaches for a disinfectant wipe and opens it, cleaning her hands. He watches her, unable to look away from the distaste that he knows will come, his pulse so rapid that it makes the pain of the injury intensify, a thrumming pressure in his leg. The skin around the wound is dark, shiny and swollen. Her fingertip ghosts across it, and his chest hitches. Her eyes flick to his.

“It hurts more?” She is frowning. “When I touch it like that?”

He shakes his head. Her brow smooths, her expression shifting to one of sympathy, perhaps of pity, too. Her eyes are soft in a way that used to make him mad sometimes, back when he didn’t really know her at all, when he saw her looking at her daughter or Carl or Lori like that. A softness that doesn’t belong in this world, and which he will never deserve. He looks away.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s any infection,” she tells him. She doesn’t touch him again. “I just don’t know whether to stitch it or leave it.”

The thought of her working on his leg while he is conscious makes him clammy with anxiety.

“Leave it,” he says . “Ain’t no need for stitchin’.”

“Okay.” She draws the sheet back over his leg, and his muscles turn watery with relief, his head dropping back against the pillow behind him. Carol folds her hands in her lap.

“How’s your shoulder?” he asks, the words a little slurred.

“Fine,” she replies, but glances up and sees the skepticism in his expression. She smiles sheepishly. “Getting there, anyway.”

“Any more walkers been by?”

Her smile fades. “Yeah. I haven’t been out, but we heard them. After. I think—the blood, and Ed’s body, they must have…”

Daryl feels a savage glee at the thought of Ed being eaten, even if he was already dead.

“You put him down?”

She looks uneasy, and her voice is low when she replies. “The bolt went—it went far enough.” She does not need to elaborate. Dimly, he remembers Ed screaming, the icy calm in Carol’s voice as she addressed the dying man.

“Did the right thing.” Maybe she will think he is patronising her, but her demeanour is guilty, and he cannot stand that she should regret her actions for a second. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Doubt infuses the syllable, and Daryl straightens up, leaning forward a little.

“He woulda killed you. One way or another. An’ he woulda taken her—” He stabs a finger towards the hallway. “—an’ done God knows what to her.”

Carol lifts a hand to her face, shielding her eyes, her mouth contorting as she starts to cry. The tendons in her neck tauten, her jaw clenched, and he can feel, in the tired bones of his own body, how hard she is working to restrain herself.

“‘S okay to cry,” he says roughly. “Ain’t no one here gonna punish you for it.”

He regrets the words as soon as he speaks them, the familiar, frightened part of himself shrinking from the sound that she makes. It is soft, still suppressed, but it is loud in his ears, her grief awakening a panic in him which it is impossible to escape. She bends forward, both hands covering her face, the crown of her head grazing the side of his leg, and she weeps and weeps. In the bathroom, the shower shuts off, but Sophia doesn’t come. And eventually, his hand shaking violently, Daryl lays his palm on her hair, lets his fingers rest against the short silk of it, and wishes she had someone else, someone better than him, to comfort her.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

“You can’t move it backwards.”

“Thought this was astrategygame. ‘S my strategy.”

“It’s still got rules, Daryl. Cheating doesn’t count as strategy.”

Carol looks up from unpicking the hem on Sophia’s jeans and bites back a smile as Daryl scowls down at the chessboard. Her daughter has spent three days teaching him the game—the rules, which took ten minutes, but also tactics and gambits. Every moment they’re playing is a moment Daryl doesn’t spend hobbling up and down the living room as though he can force his leg to get stronger faster, and so Carol is grateful that he agrees so readily to play each time Sophia suggests it. Maybe he is humouring the girl. But he seems genuinely interested most of the time, as pleased by Sophia’s successes as by his own less frequent victories.

The strip of dark blue hem on the jeans in Carol’s hands is half an inch long. She sighs. Sophia has grown at least two inches since she wore them last winter. The days have become suddenly shorter, the evenings cooler, and in the five days since Ed died, they have all started wearing extra layers in the evenings. Carol worries about the temperature in the living room, where Daryl sleeps alone while she and Sophia curl up together in the bedroom. They need to move on, probably, and search for the group. They need to loot this town or another for warmer clothes, ones that fit.

And yet she is reluctant to leave. She has felt more contented, more at peace these past few days than she has since before her marriage to Ed, despite her injuries and Daryl’s. She has been able to rest in a way her husband never allowed when he was alive, to sleep deeply for hours each afternoon, waking disoriented. She comes to consciousness with an automatic dread every morning and after every nap, before she remembers that her husband is gone; that her daughter is safer than she has ever really been since she was born.

Carol has ventured outside only once, with Sophia, to retrieve the box of food in the back of the Jeep. Daryl stood at the front door, leaning heavily against the doorjamb as he watched them carry it across the yard together, his face lined with pain. They have enough food to last another week, perhaps, if they are careful. Neither of the adults has raised the issue. Daryl is in no state to fight off walkers or move as quickly and stealthily as he would need to if he went on a raid.

“You should take my rook.” There is amusem*nt in Sophia’s voice, a lightness that makes Carol look up again. Daryl is studying the girl with narrowed eyes.

“You ain’t tryna set me up?” he asks suspiciously.

Sophia giggles, shaking her head. Something has changed between the man and the girl since Ed died. Perhaps Sophia is simply more relaxed without her father around, or perhaps Daryl’s injury, or the scars she saw on his chest, make him less frightening to her. Carol hasn’t asked her daughter, unwilling to prod at something so new and tentative. But she has, guiltily, used the child and her growing confidence with their companion as a buffer between herself and Daryl, a means of ensuring they are never alone, not since he first woke after being shot. Carol goes to bed at night with Sophia and stays there once the child is asleep, listening to Daryl’s halting step around the living room and kitchen. She cannot forget what he heard Ed say to her.f*ckin’ you till you bleed. Hearin’ that mouth call me daddy.She cannot face the disgust that might finally be reflected in his face once they are alone.

She looks down at her lap. Her happiness these past few days is fragile, in truth, dependent on her refusing to think about the day Ed died and about the pattern of all the days before that. Sophia has not mentioned her father once, and Carol is grateful, shamefully, that she has not had to explain what she did. That she has not yet been held accountable.

“Shoulder hurtin’?”

She glances up. Daryl’s face is concerned, his blue eyes sharp as he considers her, but he reddens and looks away when she smiles at him.

“No, I’m just distracted by your game,” she replies. “My arm’s much better now.”

He grunts, frowning at the chessboard, the fingers of one hand picking at the thumbnail of the other. She has caught him eyeing her as she prepares food, noticing the stiffness in her movements in the mornings and evenings, when her shoulder still aches. There is a rage in him evoked by her bruises and weakened arm, by any reference to what Ed did to her, a fury that Carol watches him swallow again and again. Sophia is aware of it too, though perhaps less sensitive to it than Carol. Yesterday, Daryl woke from a nap to find the girl cleaning bloodstains off the wall and stairs, prompted by boredom and a desire to make things “nicer”. He watched her for a few moments and then got off the couch and went outside, limping back and forth across the dead earth of the yard until he was chalk white with pain, his wounded leg trembling uncontrollably as he stumbled back inside. He said nothing to Sophia, but both woman and child knew what had upset him. Sophia was tearful for a while, abandoning her task and standing at the window watching him pace.

“He’s not mad at you,” Carol told her gently. The child didn’t turn from the glass as she answered.

“I know. But why is he so mad at himself?”

Carol hardly thought of the second part of what the girl said until now, because it was so remarkable to her that Sophia knew Daryl’s anger wasn’t at her. Ed’s rages were all-encompassing. Carol watches Daryl rub the raw skin beside his thumbnail, his frown deepening as his eyes flick to hers.Why is he so mad at himself?Suppressing a sigh, Carol gives up on the jeans and sets them aside, standing up just as Sophia lifts her head from the game, looking puzzled.

“What’s that smell?”

xxxx

Smoke, from the direction of the gas station. Acrid, dry, the scent drifting through the living room window, which is open just a crack. Daryl raises a finger to his lips, shifting his legs off the couch. His knife is on his belt, his crossbow and the guns in the downstairs bedroom. He meets Carol’s eyes and jerks his head towards the hallway, and she is on her feet, taking Sophia’s hand, before he has managed to stand up.

He waits until they are inside the bedroom, and then turns the coffee table onto its side, snatches their blankets off the chairs, makes sure the chess pieces are scattered across the rug. Anyone smart enough can see the place was recently inhabited, but there is no need to make it obvious. When he gets to the bedroom, Sophia is already under the bed, Carol kneeling on the floor. Daryl slides his crossbow into the space between the bed and the wall, and hands Carol one of the guns, pointing at the ceiling.

“Gonna take a look,” he murmurs, and she nods, wide-eyed. Carrying the revolver, his eyes on the windows as he moves along the walls, Daryl heads for the stairs. He hasn’t climbed them since he was shot, and his thigh burns and tightens as he limps up laboriously, grimacing at the effort required. There are still bloodstains on the floor beneath his feet, which Sophia didn’t get to while she was cleaning, and once he is in the main bedroom, he stops, out of breath, momentarily shaken by everything he didn’t notice while he was beating Ed. The bed is rumpled, brown and yellow stains on the sheets, one nightstand on its side and the lamp broken. The mirror above the dresser has a fine web of cracks spreading from its centre, as though someone punched it or drove something into it. And the lower panes of the window, to which he walks in a daze, are streaked with handprints: small, feminine, only one hand. He touches his fingertips to one of the prints, lowering his palm slowly to cover it. Ed would never have brought her up here if Daryl hadn’t been too drunk to understand what he was seeing in the living room. It could have ended there. He could have ended it.

From the gas station forecourt, a thin plume of smoke rises. The hill prevents Daryl from seeing what is burning, but the size of the fire, and the fact that it doesn’t seem to be spreading, suggests that a group of people have lit it for cooking or warmth. Enough people not to be afraid of drawing a few curious walkers to their blaze. Daryl watches the smoke uncoil for a few minutes, standing to the side of the window, and then he heads downstairs. As he reaches the bedroom doorway, he hears a car engine, the vehicle entering the housing development a couple of blocks away.

He ducks into the bedroom, his hand damp on the grip of the revolver, and bends to check on the woman and child. Sophia has her face to the wall, but Carol lies with her back against her daughter’s, facing outwards, watching him silently as he lowers himself to the floor. Lifting a finger to his lips, waiting for her nod, he rolls over and backs up against her, as far into the gloom as he can get, the gun held against his chest. The strangers might just be passing through. They might be friendly. But he is not strong enough yet to protect Carol and Sophia from more than one or two men. Better they are not discovered than risk encountering a hostile party.

The sound of the car engine rumbles closer, into one of the streets adjacent to the house. Against the middle of his back, Daryl can feel the pistol in Carol’s hand, above it the soft pressure of her breasts. A car door slams, and she jumps, her free hand taking hold of the edge of Daryl’s shirt. He turns his head a little, wanting to reassure her, though his mouth is tacky with fear. Her fingers twist in his shirt, her knuckles grazing the bare skin of his hip just above his belt. He stiffens, and turns to face outwards again, waiting for her to let go. But instead, she flattens her hand against his skin, her breath catching, her forehead bumping his back between his shoulder-blades.

He should be angered by the unasked-for contact, by her neediness, and for a second, he is. They have not touched at all since she last checked his wound three days ago, leaving it to him to monitor after that. She has been carefulnotto touch him, if he is honest with himself— skirting around him, holding herself away from him when they pass in the hallway. But he remembers how she shook in his arms a few nights back, naked and terrified and trusting. And now, instead of nudging her away, he reaches down and cups her hand with his. Her fingers are cold, and his touch is rough, a quick squeeze that also serves to lift her hand away from his skin. She draws back in the second that follows, the pressure of her forehead and breasts lessening, though there is not enough room under the bed to put proper space between them.

They lie in silence as the minutes tick by. Daryl’s leg begins to throb, and he reaches down and pushes a hand against the wound as though to silence it, through the denim of his last pair of jeans and the bandage beneath it. Carol shifts, her breasts rubbing against his shirt. He is prickly with the need to move away from her, his back sweaty, his co*ck half erect despite the danger they are in. But the sound of voices drifts through the house, male voices coming closer to the front yard, the door of the neighbouring house banging as they go inside.

“Daryl?” Carol breathes.

“Can you run?” he asks through clenched teeth. “You strong enough to run? You and Sophia?”

She doesn’t reply for a moment. “Yes. But—”

“They come into the house, you run for the back door and go,” he whispers. “Hide somewhere else until they’re gone. Head away from the gas station.”

“What about you?” She is breathing quickly, and he can feel each rise and fall of her chest against his back. Abruptly, he flashes to what it felt like when he held her, how soft her skin was, how her breasts swelled above the blanket as she leaned into his chest. “Daryl?” Her voice is frightened, but there is a note of determination in it. “We’re not leaving without you.”

“Gotta,” he hisses. “Can’t run.”

“I’m scared.” It is Sophia, her voice the quietest of all three of theirs. Fabric rustles. “Mama?”

“We’re going to be fine,” Carol replies. “They’re not going to find us.”

As if on cue, the neighbour’s door bangs again, and, a moment later, the handle of the show house’s front door rattles. Daryl eases the safety off the revolver.

“Run when I tell you.” It is the last thing he can safely say to her, because the front door shudders as something thumps against it once and then again, the cheap wood giving even as the lock holds. A muffled voice utters a curse.

“Damn couch blockin’ it.”

Carol inhales sharply, grabbing Daryl’s bicep, and though he hears what she does, he holds up a hand.Wait.

“You gonna push it out the way, or admire the upholstery while I stand here gettin’ old, brother?”

Daryl rolls out from under the bed, using the edge of the nightstand to hoist himself to his feet. Carol follows him, her eyes watery, her smile truer and happier than he has seen it since the horde passed through the farm. Wriggling out of her hiding place, Sophia darts past them both, dodging Carol’s reaching hand.

“Rick?Rick?” The delight in the child’s voice dislodges something in Daryl, dismay briefly overwhelming his relief at the familiar voices. Pride, he thinks, a self-satisfaction he was foolish to feel these past few days, a sense of self-discovery with it. For a while, he was someone the girl seemed to like. For a while, he was the kind of man she might respect. But that was only because there was no one to compare him to.Fool.

xxxx

In the two weeks or so since she last saw him, Rick has grown thinner, his eyes bright with an intensity that is slightly unsettling. He is jittery with some pent-up preoccupation he does not immediately share, even as he embraces her and Sophia, his eyes tearing up at the sight of the girl, and shakes Daryl’s hand. Behind him, Shane looks grim and tired, skinnier too.

At the gas station, their cars and the RV are parked in a circle around the garbage can in which the fire burns. The day is on the cusp of evening, the light thickening. Carol, who hasn’t been outside for some time, holds Sophia’s hand tightly as they cross the forecourt, though the girl tugs to be released when she sees Carl. Behind them is the rattle of Daryl’s crossbow, his uneven step on the asphalt.

At first, she thinks they are all there: Lori, Carl, T-Dog, Beth, Maggie, Glen, Hershel, Andrea and Dale. The crowd of faces turned to watch them approach is hard to parse in the lengthening shadows. But then Lori comes forward, Andrea behind her,Carol Sophia oh thank God, their arms gathering the Peletiers in an embrace. As the women move aside to allow the others to greet them, Lori murmurs in Carol’s ear.

“We lost Beth to the horde.”

Maggie’s face is drawn, her eyes dull, and Carol holds her for an extra moment, whisperingI’m so sorry. Hershel says a stiff hello, his eyes lingering on Sophia, and just before he turns away, he bends so his face is level with the child’s.

“I’m glad you made it, Miss,” he says, and clears his throat, walking away before she can respond.

When the group hears there is running water in the houses, they smother the fire and head down into the development, crowding into the show house. Carol feels like a hostess, somehow responsible for their comfort, and she finds herself distressed by the chaos of the living room, the stains on the walls and floor. The group passes Ed’s remains in the driveway without recognising him, and it is Sophia who ends up revealing his fate, Carl asking loudly what no one else has yet.

“Where’s your dad?”

“He died.” The softness of Sophia’s voice does not help; everyone fell silent as soon as Carl spoke.

“Tried to take Sophia and leave,” Daryl says. The thread of rage in his voice draws Carol towards him, and she has to make herself stay where she is across the room. “Walker came and that—Ed used Carol as a shield.” He shrugs, his face defiant, daring them to judge him. “So I put a bolt through him.”

He doesn’t look at Carol or Sophia, and he says no more, nothing about her part in ending Ed’s life. Shane narrows his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips.

“He give you that limp?”

“Shot me,” Daryl says shortly, his eyes sliding to Carol and away. “Still healin’ up.”

“I’ll take a look later if you like,” Hershel says. “Bullet go right through?”

Daryl shakes his head. “Still in the muscle.”

The old man purses his lips. “Best to leave it then, if there’s no sign of infection. Askin’ for trouble tryin’ to take it out.”

The others say nothing. Carol saw them notice the fading bruises on her face when they greeted her, saw the flicker of their discomfort come and go in the blink of an eye. If they are relieved Ed is gone, she thinks for one bitter second, perhaps it is because they will no longer have to be embarrassed by the evidence of his abuse. She squashes the uncharitable thought, and points at the last of their food on the counter.

“We’ve been eating cold meals,” she says. “Haven’t wanted to light a fire. Help yourselves.”

The speed with which Carl makes his way to the kitchen tells her they have been rationing for a while. Lori intercepts the boy.

“We’ve got some canned soup to add to your stores,” the deputy’s wife says. Her expression is apologetic. “And a bag of raisins.”

“Rick’s had us raiding doctors’ offices and baby stores instead of looking for food,” Andrea says coolly, her gaze icy as she raises an eyebrow at the man in question. “Like Lori doesn’t still have seven whole months to loot for diapers and plastic syringes.”

“Hey now.” Dale raises a finger, a note of admonishment in his voice, but Rick cuts him off.

“If we hadn’t raided those offices, Andrea, we still wouldn’t have anywhere to go for winter.” He looks around at them. Carol remembers her third-grade teacher lecturing the students onconsequencesafter someone wrote a curse word on the board during recess. “Now I’m not sayin’ we couldn’t do with more food, butshelteris as important. When winter gets here—”

“I’m hungry, Dad,” Carl whines loudly.

“Rick.” Lori sounds nearly as impatient as her son, but her voice is quieter. “Let’s eat and then talk.”

Daryl vanishes as they start opening cans and dividing up the food. Carol glimpses him heading for the back door, and remembers, with a sinking heart, that this is how he is in the larger group. He tends to slip away from the crowd or lurk at its edges until his irritation with the way the conversation is going provokes him into speaking.

“You, uh, you holdin’ up okay?” It is T-Dog, standing at her elbow with two plates of canned pineapple and viennas. He hands her one, and she looks around for Sophia. T-Dog nudges her and points to the bottom step. “Over there. With Carl.”

Her daughter is eating happily, her head bent close to her companion’s. Carol flashes a grateful smile at Lori and turns to the man beside her.

“Thanks,” she says. “And yes, I am. Doing fine. Thank you.”

They sit on the floor with their backs against the wall, and Carol picks at her food, worrying that Daryl won't get his portion.

“He’s a—a good dude.” T-Dog scoops up a mouthful of sausage. “Daryl. I wasn’ sure at first, but he saved my life on the road the day—” He stops.

“When Sophia went missing,” she finishes for him. “I remember.” She does, though the story filtered into her consciousness in fragments during the days that followed the traffic jam. That day on the road she was aware of nothing but her child being gone. She shivers and eats another piece of fruit. “He is good.”

They eat in silence for a while, T-Dog’s arm brushing hers. She likes him, trusted him instinctively from the earliest days in the quarry, and she enjoys his company now, the lack of pressure, the way he doesn’t ask difficult questions. She is halfway through her plate, setting the rest aside for Daryl just in case, when Rick stands up and clears his throat.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” he says. “Carol, how much—where’s Daryl?”

She gets to her feet. “I’ll find him.”

She leaves Rick waiting and walks down the hallway. The back door is ajar, and she can smell tobacco as she approaches it. Daryl is standing just outside in the falling dark, a cigarette between his fingers, his eyes on the ground. His posture is crooked, his bad leg favoured in a way which means it’s hurting him. He doesn’t lift his head when she comes out onto the step.

“Rick wants to talk about…tomorrow,” she says. “Looting, I guess.”

The revolver is still in his belt beside his knife, the crossbow leaning against the wall of the house. He takes a drag on his cigarette, and shifts, wincing slightly as more of his weight settles on his injured leg for a second.

“It sounds like they have a place they’re…planning to go to,” she continues, her voice trailing off. He glances at her, his eyes in shadow. “Thank you for—when Carl asked, thank you—”

“Ain’t their business,” he says, his voice low and hoarse from smoking. “Not unless you want it to be.”

She shakes her head quickly. “No.” Her cheeks flush, but he just nods as though the matter is settled, dropping the cigarette butt and taking up his crossbow as he slips past her back into the house.

xxxx

The bunker might be easier to swallow as a sound plan if it did not mean backtracking halfway across the state, and if someone other than Rick, with the fervour of a small-town preacher, was pitching it. The rest of the group listens wearily, and Daryl wonders whether they have bought into the hype, or whether they have just been worn down by Rick’s enthusiasm. The sheriff’s deputy hands Carol a copy ofArchitectural Digest—snagged in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room, apparently, because Lori “likes looking at houses”—and tells her to open to page 23.

“Massive Underground Bunker in Georgia Goes on Sale for $17.5 Million,” she reads slowly. Rick spreads his hands and smiles expectantly.Ta-da!

“Underground?” Daryl says disbelievingly. Carol looks down at the magazine silently, and he remembers her trepidation when they descended into the depths of the CDC.

“Forty-five feet underground. Built during the Cold War to withstand a nuclear attack, converted into a luxury home. All the safety features still intact. Solar power, a water tank that fills from a well, a ventilation system and a generator, my friend.” Rick gives a gleeful chuckle. “Fourteen thousand square feet of space and only one aboveground entrance we need to guard.”

“It’s in Savannah,” Carol says without expression. “In a relatively remote area.”

“We were headed to Fort Benning,” Shane tells them from his seat on the couch, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “When Rick got this genius idea. And now we’re backtrackin’ on the off chance that no one else has had the same idea.”

“That magazine is only a few months old.” Rick goes to Carol and snatches it up. “This place went on sale just before the outbreak. What are the chances that—”

“That someone else knows about it?” Dale interjects dryly. “Someone who lives locally, for example?”

Rick exhales loudly through his nose. “What did we do when the virus started? All of us. Glen, what did you do?”

Glen looks startled.

“Hit the road,” he says after a beat. Rick nods triumphantly.

“Andrea? T-Dog?” He doesn’t give them time to reply. “That’s right. Wemeton the road, for C—for Pete’s sake. You don’t think everyone else did the same?”

“Rick, honey, you don’t need to convince us all over again,” Lori says with a pained smile. “I’m sure Carol and Sophia are relieved to know we’ve got a plan. And, uh, Daryl.”

Carol looks up, her eyes meeting Daryl’s. There is a question in them, as though she is looking to him for guidance, and it unnerves him.

“You got gas?” he asks Dale, as an excuse to look away from her. The older man nods.

“Filled up at the last town we stopped at, yesterday. Got lucky with a fleet of delivery trucks in a warehouse.”

“So it’s settled then,” Rick says, rubbing his hands together. Daryl bristles.

“Ain’t nothin’ settled. Carol?” He is aware, suddenly, of a hush in the room as he addresses her. He reddens, and Shane lets out a quiet snort.

“Well well.” The cop looks between them. “Guess that explains things.”

“Shane,” Dale says sharply, and turns to Carol. “You want to sleep on it? You’re under no obligation, you and Sophia, to come with us.”

She smiles at him, a quick, reassuring smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Of course we’re coming with you.” She swallows. “If Rick—if you all think this is the best plan, then I’m sure you’re right.”

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Dale drives the RV down to the show house, and they split up to sleep: Dale and T-Dog in the camper, the Grimes family in the main bedroom, Maggie, Glenn and Hershel in the spare bedroom upstairs, Carol, Sophia and Andrea in the downstairs bedroom. Daryl and Shane take the couches, ignoring one another, and Daryl escapes from the house as soon as he is sure no one is going to steal his sleeping spot. He has avoided being outdoors while his leg is recovering, but he feels safer with the others here, within shouting distance.

That sense of safety is about all he is enjoying about the reunion with the group, though he knows he should be happier. Sophia and Carol seem overjoyed, chattier and livelier than he has seen them since the farm. There is strength in numbers. Hershel knows medicine. It’s good for Sophia to be around another kid. And yet Daryl is out on the back steps alone, brooding. He is seated on the top step, his wounded leg extended in front of him as he lights a cigarette. Crickets chirp nearby, a breeze teasing the lighter’s flame. He rests his head against the stair rail and takes a deep drag.

“Mind if I join you?”

He closes his eyes briefly at the sound of her voice, and answers with a noncommittal grunt. He can smell the citrus of her shampoo, and when she settles on the step at his side, he can smell the scent that is just hers, too, even through the cigarette smoke. She looks down at his straightened leg.

“How is it?” she asks.

“Fine.” It is what it is. He lifts his head from the rail. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine.”

He taps ash from the end of the cigarette and inhales once more. Inside the house, the group is quieting down, only Lori’s voice drifting through the window of the main bedroom, and the sound of someone in the shower downstairs.

“Where’s Sophia?” he asks. Carol glances at him, her gaze like the brush of a fingertip against his cheek, his temple. He stares at the glowing end of the cigarette.

“Sleeping with the Grimeses. She’s missed Carl.” Carol sighs, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, her forearms tucked against her chest. The ghost of Ed’s hand is still on her neck. Daryl thinks of the marks on the window upstairs, how her fingerprints disappeared beneath his hand. His chest tightens with a longing that has no clear object, a need that refuses to resolve into anything as clear or specific as a wish.

“It’s good they came back this way.” Her voice vanishes like smoke at the end of each word, syllables merging with the darkness. “We’re safer with them. And Sophia and I are less of a—a burden on you.”

He looks at her sharply, the narrow nape of her neck and the soft bristles at her hairline. “Ain’t a burden. Ain’tbeena burden.”

She laughs quietly, and glances at him over her shoulder for just a second, smiling ruefully. Her eyes shift from murky grey to silver in the faint light of his cigarette.

“That’s kind of you to say,” she says, turning away again. “And we’ve appreciated everything—everything you’ve done for us.” She pauses, and then sits up straight and meets his eyes. “Truly.”

His lips twitch, and he bites them, the fingers holding his cigarette trembling for a moment. She sounds like she is saying a kind of goodbye, untethering herself and her daughter from him with quick, gentle hands. Looking down, ignoring the ache in his chest, he nods in acknowledgement of her thanks. Her eyes remain on his profile, and her voice falters as she continues.

“Sophia, she—it’s—she, uh, she trusts you, I think. And that, that’s been—” She stops, and he can sense her trying to maintain her composure.

“‘S a good kid,” he mutters. The shower shuts off in the bathroom, and the house is silent. Carol sniffs softly, swiping a hand across her face.

“You’re going to come to Savannah?” she asks after another minute has passed.

“Course.” He glances at her, frowning, and sees her take a shuddering breath as she looks down at her lap, nodding her head. She wipes her eyes again, and he wonders, suddenly, whether he is missing something; whether someone said or did something to her while he was avoiding the crowd. “Hey. You okay?”

She nods again, covering her eyes, her mouth contorting and a tear trickling down her cheek. Daryl shifts, flicking the end of his cigarette into the yard, starting to lift his hand from his knee and changing his mind.

“Carol?”

“I’m fine. Sorry.” She takes a deep breath and scrubs at her face, forcing a smile when she looks at him. “Just tired, I guess.”

“You gonna manage in that bunker?” he asks, floundering for reasons for her tears. “Bein’ claustrophobic?”

She stares at him in surprise, and he scowls back at her, his face colouring.

“How did you know I was claustrophobic?” she asks. He shrugs, his eyes sliding from hers.

“CDC. You told Jenner.”

She doesn’t reply, her gaze intent on him before she looks away, and for a while, neither of them speaks. The bathroom door bangs, footsteps heading up the hallway, and the crickets get louder and more numerous. Daryl sits very still, aware of Carol’s hands on her knees, the silver cap of her hair, the dim outline of a bruise on one of her wrists.

“We had a cellar,” she says after a while, her voice distant and expressionless. “And Ed, he would—when he was mad, sometimes—he had rope down there and—”

“Jesus,” Daryl hisses.

“Sorry,” she whispers immediately. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

He stands up clumsily, hauling himself onto one leg using the stair rail, and limps across the yard, into the deeper darkness. His leg is stiff from the evening chill, pain from the bullet wound seeping into his muscle. He walks right to the fence and rests the palm of one hand on the top of a picket, pressing down lightly, thinking of Ed’s face swollen with bruises.

“How long were you married to him?” The question is spoken without his consent, blurted from a part of himself he tries to keep hidden.

“Fourteen years.”

He wonders what a suitable sentence would be for fourteen years of what Ed did. How many bones did he break in that time? How much damage did he do to her? How many times did he—

A sharp spasm passes through the palm of Daryl’s hand, and he lifts it off the fence, turning and limping back to Carol. She watches him a little warily, her posture neat. Obedient. Dropping to the step beside her, he reaches for his cigarettes to give his hands something to do, something to calm the tremor in them as he speaks.

“You ain’t ever got to apologise for that sh*t,” he says. “Not to me. You say whatever you want.” He fumbles with his lighter, his hands clammy, air fluttering in his throat with every breath.Just say it,dumbass. “Makes me mad as hell.” He swallows. “What he did to you. Makes me—he deserved worse than he got.” Jamming a cigarette between his lips, he speaks around it, flicking his lighter. “But it’s right for you to talk. Tell—tell someone.”

“You,” she says, very softly. He shoves cigarettes and lighter into his pocket, and inhales, coughing as the smoke hits his lungs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s easier to tell you than—than even Lori or Andrea, now they’re back.” She looks at him, and this time he can’t look away, can’t tear his eyes from the way hers change colour, from the way they have their own light even in the shadows.

“Cause of my old man,” he says slowly.

“Maybe.” She tilts her head to one side. “And you’re a good listener, Daryl.”

He gives a dismissivepfftas she turns and gazes out into the yard, and he studies her profile for a moment longer.

“I’ll be fine in the bunker.” Her voice is firm, and he wishes he could hold onto her earlier words, the softness of them.You’re a good listener.“Just like I was in the CDC. Assuming the place isn’t overrun with people or walkers.”

“Rick seems certain it’s gonna be a damn paradise,” Daryl replies, and she chuckles. Something in the sound jerks him back to those moments in the living room, the sound of her choking around Ed’s co*ck, the scrape of her breathing. Nauseous, Daryl stares down at the cigarette burning between his fingers, his guilt so heavy that his shoulders sag.We’ve appreciated everything you’ve done for us. What about the things he didn’t do?

xxxx

“Gotta tell you somethin’.”

She is still smiling at his remark about Rick, the wry humour of it, the shy pleasure in his expression when she complimented him. His voice is low and gravelly, and only when she glances at him does she see how his face has changed, shuttered, his hand fiddling restlessly with a loose thread on his jeans. Cold dread blossoms in her belly.

“Okay,” she says lightly, curling her fingers into her palms so she can feel the blunt nails against her skin. Her back is ramrod straight, her shoulders rigid with tension.

Daryl doesn’t speak at first. He flattens his palm against his thigh and rubs the denim roughly, over the bandage. In his other hand, his cigarette trails smoke into the night, disintegrating into ash and dropping in a grey clump to the step.

“You can say whatever you want to me too, Daryl.” Her voice is loud in her ears, reverberating in her skull, because it is a lie. There are things she is afraid to hear from him, things she wishes they both could forget.That mouth callin’ me daddy.

“That night.” He stops and swallows audibly, his fingers digging into his leg, and shakes his head, taking a quick drag on his cigarette. She waits, but he doesn’t continue.

“Which night?” she asks, because he has begun and so she must help him finish this. The words are molasses slow, her mouth dry. He glances at her and away again.

“Night before he died.” There are so many other ways he could describe it. She is grateful he chooses this one. She hums encouragingly, and he clears his throat. “Got real drunk.”

“I remember,” she says, trying not to sound like she is judging him. He shifts on the step.

“Woke up after a couple hours, but felt like—like I was still asleep.” He falters. “Thought I was dreamin’.” He exhales in a hiss and repeats the words desolately. “Thought I wasdreamin’.”

With a suddenness that startles Carol, the crickets cease chirping. The moon has risen above the hill, pale yellow and sickle shaped.

“Got up and went down the hallway, ‘cause I heard—” He rocks forward, minutely, his fingers working on the fabric of his jeans. “—heard you. An’ I saw.”

She takes the words one by one, collects them in her lap, lets them hold her in place with their weight. This is what she deserves, this shame, for every day she didn’t try and leave with her daughter. She readies herself to speak, wetting her lips.

“You saw him…saw Ed beating me?” She remembers the limp smack of her limbs across the coffee table, the blinding pain as he wrenched her shoulder out of the socket. In between is hazy, heat and pressure and hurt, the stink of alcohol and Ed’s sweat.

“No,” Daryl whispers, and for an instant she is relieved, her brain twisting itself into knots for an explanation. He must be talking about when he found her in the living room after she came downstairs. The relief lasts for a couple of seconds before it is replaced with horror. “Saw him and you.” He turns to look at her, his eyes dropping to the bruises her neck. “He held your throat.” His voice has risen in pitch, his breathing quickened. “An’ you were—” There is a sheen of tears in his eyes, and his lips press together, sealing his next words inside.

She understands, then, what he saw, what he heard, and she draws away from him, hugging herself.f*ck me, Daddy. Carefully, she sidesteps a rush of unexpected grief, a sense of something lost so utterly that it would be better not to have had it at all.

“What you must think of me,” she whispers, her eyes on the toes of her boots as she bends over her folded arms.

“I shoulda done somethin’.” Daryl’s voice is ragged, stricken. “I shoulda stopped him. But I was too f*ckin’ drunk to—to—”

She shakes her head. She wants to explain to him, to defend herself, and the inclination worsens her shame.

“I tried,” she manages, a pathetic rasp, her throat almost stopped. “I tried, Daryl. He wanted me to—say it—say it every time.” The depravity of it is so stark, in this moment, that she is lightheaded with revulsion. Excuses crowd onto her tongue, small and sour. “I said no, I did, I swear. I said no, but sometimes he—sometimes I couldn’t.” Despite her efforts, she is crying, holding back sobs with such determination that her ribs ache. She cannot look at Daryl.

There is quiet for a moment, aside from their breathing.

“That ain’t—ain’t why I mentioned it,” he says in bewilderment. “He—he—your arm an’ your face an’—Christ.” He rubs his eyes. “Told you ‘cause I shoulda done somethin’ then. An’ I’m so goddamn sorry I didn’t. I’msorry.” His voice is wretched, so much so that she forces herself to look at him. It easier than it should be to meet his eyes because they mirror exactly what she is feeling. Except he feels that way about himself, not her, and it is so preposterous, so intolerable to her that she reaches out and rests a hand on his forearm.

“Oh Daryl, don’t—you don’t—”

He looks down at her fingers on his arm, and she withdraws her hand. Because of course he will not want her to touch him, not after what he saw and heard. She burns with mortification for all the days that have passed since that night, for every time she has basked in the contentment of this dreamy, peaceful time with Daryl and Sophia. Folding her arms, clamping them against her belly, she tries to steady her voice.

“Daryl, that night, what Ed did, that wasn’t anything…anything unusual,” she says gently. “Nothing he hadn’t done many, many times before.”

Daryl looks at her, his face a mask of disgust, and she flinches, leaning away from him, her eyes filling once more.

“So it doesn’ matter that I saw and did nothin’? That what you sayin’?” he asks bitterly. After a moment, she nods, biting her lip, and his eyes narrow. Mingled with the rage in them is a misery that makes her fingers twitch against her sides with the urge to comfort him. “Bullsh*t. f*ckin’bullsh*t.” He leans forward, into her face, but instead of feeling afraid she feels only pity for him, for his error in estimating her value. “You wanna—you wanna ignore the sh*t he put you through, that’s your choice. It ain’t what he deserves, though. And it’s a f*ckin’ lie.” He jabs the air in front of her chest with his finger. “Allof it matters. Every—every goddamn time he touched you when you didn’ want it, every time he f*ckin’hurtyou.” His gaze is blurred, and she blinks to clear her vision; but the tears are his, this time, not hers, melting the blue of his eyes. “Go ahead an’ keep on believin’ you ain’t worth nothin’, ain’t worth me actin’ like amanan’ breakin’ his f*ckin’ neck when he—when he—” His mouth twists, his voice bewildered and emptied of rage suddenly, his next words an almost laughable contradiction to everything he has just said. “Ain’t like it really matters to me anyway.”

He draws back as suddenly as he lunged forward, and the air cools around her as the heat of his body and breath disappears. Before she can respond, he struggles to stand up using the stair rail, his injured leg dragging against the steps. She reaches for him instinctively, her hands closing on his arm, and it is thanks to Ed that she ducks, fast enough to avoid being knocked back as Daryl yanks his arm free of her grasp.

They stare at each other. He is breathing heavily, gripping the rail with one white-knuckled hand, and her heart is racing, her muscles telling her to flee. But Daryl’s face is not her husband’s; there is no hatred in it, no lust for violence. Only a devastation about which she can do nothing, because he will accept neither her words nor her touch.

xxxx

Shane snores, in stuttering, unpredictable bursts that startle Daryl into wakefulness repeatedly during the night. It takes longer each time for him to slip back into oblivion, and all he thinks about as he lies awake is how he spoke to Carol, how she had to dodge the movement of his arm. By the time the group begins to stir, Carl’s excited voice breaking the stillness of the house, Andrea laughing in a bedroom, Daryl’s eyes are gritty, his nerves jangling.

At Rick’s request, he plots out for the deputy where he and Ed have already raided. Glenn, Rick, Shane and T-Dog will hunt for supplies today, and tomorrow, it has been agreed, they will leave for Savannah. Carol lights a fire in the barbecue in the backyard and makes coffee, and once he knows where she is, Daryl takes himself out front, as far from her as he can get.

The morning is crisp and clear, the sky a hard, crystalline blue. The door of the RV is ajar, its faded curtains pulled open. The yard feels safer with the camper’s bulk in front of it. Daryl walks to the Jeep in the driveway and leans against the side, listening to the hum of flies over Ed’s remains. He offered to burn what was left of the corpse as soon as he could stand up for long enough after his injury, but Carol declined, her face like stone, her reply permitting no discussion.

He turns his face towards the sun, low in the sky but already searing the cool edge off the day, and closes his eyes. He wants to join the other men on the run, but it is foolish and dangerous for him to accompany them.

“Morning.”

He opens his eyes. Sophia is in front of him, her freckles gleaming golden-brown, her hair damp from a wash. She is holding a battered tin mug he recognises from the RV’s cupboards, steam rising from it and the smell of sweet coffee clogging the air, the first he has smelt since arriving in this town. The girl holds it out to him. There is an uncertainty to her demeanour that makes him afraid that she knows, somehow, what passed between her mother and Daryl last night. He flushes, and takes the mug.

“Thanks,” he mutters, looking down at the dark liquid. She neither replies nor leaves, the toe of one grubby sneaker scuffing the dirt, and he glances up. She is frowning slightly, her hands rolled in the bottom of her T-shirt.

“What?” he asks abruptly. The sooner she spits it out, the sooner he can be alone again. She starts, and frees her hands, smoothing her shirt over her waistband and squaring her skinny shoulders.

“Are you busy today?” She casts a quick look towards the house full of people. “Rick says he’s going to look for food and clothes.”

“Well I ain’t.” He glowers at her. “‘Cause I’ll get everyone into sh—into trouble with my damn leg holdin’ me up.”

Her face clears, her posture relaxing, and she smiles at him shyly. Puzzled, he squints back at her, his frown deepening.

“Can we maybe play chess later then?” she asks and turns pink. “When you’re—only if you want to, if you’ve got time.”

He smiles back at her before he has even properly felt the flicker of joy her words deliver, his expression smoothing into a happiness which it has never felt safe for him to show, not as a child and never around Merle, even when they were adults. Not if it wasn’t a happiness prompted by alcohol. But then he thinks of Carol, of the way she shrank from him on the steps last night, and he looks away from the girl’s eager face.

“If your momma says it’s okay,” he mutters. “You gotta check with her.”

He takes a sip of the coffee. Sweet and strong, with more sugar than he guesses everyone else has been rationed. Carol realised, at some point in the last two weeks, exactly how he liked it. He is angry all over again with her suddenly, for the ease with which she dismissed what Ed did and what Daryl failed to do.

“Okay.” Sophia sounds confused. Still she doesn’t leave him. He takes another drink and looks at her impatiently. She is gazing at her father’s bones, shreds of flesh and clothing clinging to them, a haze of flies above his ribcage. Daryl is used to the stink after so many days and hasn’t noticed it for a while, but now he senses it beneath the smell of his coffee: rancid meat and rot. Sophia appears transfixed by the corpse.f*ck Carol, he thinks viciously.

“You want me to burn it?” he asks the girl. She glances at him, her gaze dropping to his leg. “Him. Or move it, move him somewhere?”

“He shot you.” She looks older suddenly, with a gravity to her Daryl doesn’t recognise. He shrugs, thrown by her reply.

“Did worse to you and your momma.” He meets her eyes. “But if you want him buried or burnt or whatever, you say so.”And f*ck what Carol wants.

She blinks, and her eyes shimmer, but in the next second they are clear.

“No,” she says. “No, thank you.” She seems to struggle with her next words, her brow creasing, her lips stammering silently before she speaks. “I want him—I want to—I want him to be forgotten.” She tilts her chin and looks just like her mother for a moment, the gesture filled with defiance. “By Mama and by me and you andeveryone.” She looks down at Ed. “Leave him there.”

She turns and walks back towards the house, and Daryl watches her, bony ankles above her socks, the backs of her arms freckled, the ends of her hair fluttering as they dry. At the same age, he still had four or five more years under his father’s roof and some of the worst beatings of his life ahead of him. He wants to envy her, this kid, for her escape from whatever her father would have done to her, to her mother, in the coming months and years. He wants to resent the way she has changed in just a few days, the poise she has begun to find in herself, even if it exists only for brief moments. He deserved that too, when he was a kid. Deserved to turn his back on his father’s rotting corpse and declare the man forgotten.

But he knows too much of what Sophia’s life has been up to this point to envy her; knows the way her nervous system has been configured around fear and only fear, how hard her mother’s love has had to work to sustain the softness in her, the kindness, whatever faith she has left in other people.She trusts you, I think. A lump forms in his throat, his eyes stinging, and he gulps the rest of his coffee. Even if Carol is right, it is only a matter of time before he breaks the girl’s trust, just like he broke her mother’s.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

T-Dog drives like Merle, with an aggression that surprises Daryl, his body hunched over the wheel of the truck, the gear shifter wrenched between positions on the bumpy dirt roads. They travelled only a short distance on the highway this morning before turning into a patchwork of fields and distant farm buildings, their route plotted by Rick on a set of maps from yesterday’s raid. From afar, the abandoned houses and high-ridged barns look as peaceful as they ever did, tractors parked beneath trees and the last of the wildflowers blossoming along fences. But here and there, something is clearly amiss: five horses dead and half-eaten in a pasture, a faraway figure stumbling along the edge of a dam in a fluttering nightgown, a stroller lying on its side in the road, bloodstains on the white hood.

Behind the Winnebago and the other cars, T-Dog drives grimly past it all. The run yesterday was a success; they have no need to loot these widely scattered farms. In the back of the truck, Daryl’s bike rattles and squeaks. It has only accompanied them because the group had so much gas to spare, and because Rick and Shane were as taken as Daryl with the Chevy truck parked outside the bank. It is hardy and intimidating, built for off-road travel, big enough to transport plentiful goods and people should the need arise.

In the cab, there is, by necessity, mostly silence. The noise of the truck over the gravel road and the clatter of the bike make conversation difficult. Daryl likes it this way. He does not know T-Dog very well, and though there is no hostility between them anymore over Merle, not since the horde on the highway, they are not quite friends yet. Daryl cannot drive at the moment, and T-Dog can, so they are together in this truck. Shane and Andrea are in the Hyundai Shane fixed up near the farm, Dale, Maggie, Glenn and Hershel are in the RV, and the Grimes family and the Peletiers are in a Dodge Ram, which Rick picked up on the highway, apparently, after they fled the farm.

Daryl hasn’t spoken to Carol since their conversation on the steps. Yesterday, he played chess with Sophia in the afternoon, at the narrow table in the RV because the women were tallying food supplies in the living room of the house. He ate with Dale, and sharpened his crossbow bolts, and was aware at every moment of Carol’s location in his periphery, or across the room, or moving quietly around upstairs. But he did not approach her, and she did not try to speak to him. It is easy, among this many people, to ignore someone.

The Chevy jolts over a final pothole and turns onto a tarred road, the noise in the cab dying down. T-Dog sighs with relief, and glances at Daryl.

“I mean I know why we’re goin’ this way, but hell.” He shakes his head and looks back at the road. Daryl grunts. Their plotted route to Savannah should get them there in a couple of days if all goes according to plan. T-Dog reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of gum, the brand name rubbed away by the friction of his jeans. He offers it to Daryl, who accepts a piece. Cherry flavour, the choice, he imagines, of girls Sophia’s age. T-Dog shrugs sheepishly as Daryl bites into it and scrunches his nose. “Take what I can get, man.”

“‘S good,” Daryl assures him. The sweetness of the sugar, the intensity of the artificial flavour, make his mouth water. They chew in silence for a while, the sun climbing steadily in front of them, the bonnet of the Chevy gleaming.

“Carol,” T-Dog says eventually, and Daryl stiffens. “She looks pretty—she looks pretty beat up. Ed do that?”

“Who the hell else?” Daryl retorts, reddening. The other man holds up a hand, his eyes wide.

“Hey, I ain’t sayin’—I ain’t accusin’you. Damn. Just makin’ conversation.”

Daryl snorts resentfully and looks out his window. The gum has lost its fruit flavour, and tastes plasticky. There is nothing to see through the dust-smeared glass except endless green and yellow, and the dark blur of asphalt as the truck coasts along.

“She says she’s okay though?”

Daryl doesn’t know why the other man is pursuing the subject of Carol. He turns back to T-Dog and scowls at him, but T-Dog’s eyes are on the road.

“Well, I dunno what the hell that means,” Daryl says. “‘Cause it’s not like she’d tell anyone if she weren’t.”

His gaze shifts to the cars ahead of them, finds the Dodge. Vaguely, in the back seat, he can make out the shape of Carol’s head, Sophia’s resting on her shoulder. He thinks of the scars on Carol’s skin, the birdlike frailty of her in his arms.

“Yeah,” T-Dog says disconsolately. “Keeps sh*t to herself.”

“Ain’t like any of us ever ask.” Daryl should stop talking, but he is starting to understand how mad he is with all of them, not just with himself. Howallof them failed Carol long before Sophia went missing. “Just noticed the—the marks an’ carried on like we hadn’t.”Watched her cry while she cooked our goddamn meals.

T-Dog looks across at him, an eyebrow raised, and Daryl bristles defensively.

“Saidanyof us. Includes me.”

The other man hums. “Guess you did somethin’ about it in the end.”

“Ain’t sorry, either,” Daryl snaps.

“Ain’t gonna argue with you about that.” T-Dog sighs. Up ahead, the Winnebago has pulled over outside a small, dilapidated wooden building at the side of the road, an old farm stand, perhaps. As he eases the Chevy to a stop behind Shane and Andrea, T-Dog clears his throat.

“You, uh—you an’ Carol—” He takes the key out of the ignition and looks nervously at Daryl. “There some kinda—you got, uh, intentions?”

Daryl stares at him, his face so hot that his hairline is damp with sweat.

“What the f*ck you askin’?” he says savagely. “Her husband’s been dead barely a week.”

T-Dog swallows, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Just tryna get the lay of the land.” He grimaces, a slightly hangdog look on his face. “Truth be told, I—think she’s real sweet. But there’s a kinda…vibe between you two an’—”

“Ain’t avibe. Ain’tsh*t. Got stuck together after the resta you left the farm. That’sall.”

Despite the force of Daryl’s words, T-Dog’s expression relaxes, and he gives a tentative smile.

“Good! That’s good, man! Means I don’ have to worry ‘bout steppin’ on your toes.”

Daryl’s stomach twists, and he wishes he could back the conversation up, find some way to undo what he’s said. Not because he hasintentions. The very idea is laughable, in a way that makes his chest hurt. But Carol—T-Dog—Carol only just escaped Ed. The thought of some other man, even a good one, putting his hands on the soft skin of her back, seeing the scars there, feeling the blades of her hipbones against his—Daryl cannot countenance it.She’s real sweet.T-Dog doesn’t know how much more she is than “sweet”, how she’s also strong, and sad, and beautiful like childhood treasures are beautiful: shards of glittering blue glass, worn arrowheads, a scrap of the softest leather. The kind of beauty people disregard, the kind that men like Ed try to destroy. Daryl remembers Carol in the jewellery store, her husband’s angry confusion as his attempt at humiliation went wrong.

“Have some goddamn respect for what she’s goin’ through,” he says to T-Dog disgustedly. “Ed’s barely cold.”

But the other man just shrugs.

“I ain’t gonna rush her. But things’re different these days. Time works different. And it ain’t like she was happily married.” T-Dog narrows his eyes speculatively. “You sure you—”

“I’m sure. Shut the hell up about it.” Daryl opens his door and slides off the end of the seat, gritting his teeth as the foot of his bad leg hits the dirt. Aware of T-Dog’s eyes on his back, Daryl limps stiffly over to the rest of the group, the sweat on his face drying in the sun. The day is blistering hot at this hour, a final throwback to the height of summer, and the back of his neck seems to shrivel in the heat.

The group has gathered inside the farm stand, where there is meagre shade thanks to a roof that has collapsed in places. The back wall of the stand is painted with a scene of abundance, apple trees and bushels of wheat, green beans clustered in front of pyramids of tomatoes, an enormous pumpkin garlanded with flowers and herbs. The paint is badly faded, the colours merging tiredly into a dull brown, and someone has carved a message along the handle of a painted pitchfork:DUST 2 DUST.

Rick, hat on his head, is glugging water from a canteen, pacing the verge and squinting down the road ahead of them. The others are standing around splitting up Slim Jims and bags of prepackaged, stale popcorn which the looting party found in a convenience store yesterday. Carol is with Sophia and Carl at the open front of the farm stand, watching them eat, nothing in her hands but a bottle of water. Her arms are bare, and as he approaches, Daryl seeks, automatically, the fading bruises on them, the shape of which he knows precisely after five days. His gaze bounces from her weak shoulder to her face for just a second, but it is a second too long: she is watching him, her eyes meeting his in a bright blue flash before he looks away.

He doesn’t go any nearer to the group. He walks to the fence behind the farm stand and leans against a pole, fishing a box of cigarettes from his pocket. From here, he can see only Rick, and Maggie, Glenn and Hershel standing in a cluster. As he lights up, he watches T-Dog climb out the truck and make his way to the others, an eagerness in his face that makes Daryl want to hit him.

He is halfway through his cigarette, jiggling his bad leg to warm the muscle, when Sophia comes over and wordlessly holds out a Slim Jim, whole and unopened. Daryl frowns at her and picks a fleck of ash off his bottom lip. Her brow furrows.

“It’s for you,” she says unnecessarily. He looks past her, but Carol is out of sight from here. It’s why he chose this spot.

“Your momma send you?” he asks. The girl’s arm drops slowly to her side, and the packaging for the snack rustles in her hand. She nods uncertainly. “You tell her to eat it herself.” His voice is sharp, and Sophia flinches, her fingers tightening on the Slim Jim. She glances back anxiously, and Daryl takes a drag on his cigarette, sighing out the smoke. The girl shuffles her feet, head bent, the fingers of her free hand at her mouth as she bites her thumbnail.

“Are you mad at her?” The question is a mumble, muffled by her fingers, but he hears it well enough. Some part of him resists replying, because he has been this child himself, trying to puzzle out the fury and resentment between adults, trying to understand it enough to predict the pattern of violence. He spits into the dirt, and over by the farm stand, T-Dog laughs.

“She ain’t nothin’ to me,” he hears himself say to the child. She looks up at him in confusion, her eyes damp, the Slim Jim bent in both hands now. “So why would I be mad at her? Huh?” He straightens, dropping the last of his smoke and grinding it out under one heel. Sophia stares at him, and within the bewilderment on her face, he sees a flicker of pity, of recognition, and it is like looking at Carol on those steps as he raged at her. His lip curls. “You tell her to leave me the hell alone. Got it?”

xxxx

The noise entailed in travelling with the Grimes family is both welcome and exhausting. Sophia and Carl play round after round of “Would you rather?” and then get into a discussion of their dream vacation destinations. Lori and Rick argue about the speed at which he drives along the dirt roads, which turns into an argument about a minor car accident they had after a dinner party some years ago. Judging by Carl’s eyeroll, the latter is a frequent subject of discussion, the identity of the responsible party bitterly contested. Carol half-listens to everyone, and gazes out her window, thinking of Ed.

She used to imagine what it would be like to escape him, used to dream, as she stitched her cuts and iced her bruises, of a life alone with Sophia. She planned it more than once, squirrelled away change and phoned shelters, compared bus fares to distant small towns. And yet, thrust into a version of that dream, she does not know how to live it. Her life was shaped by her parents and then by Ed, who pummelled and broke her into what he thought she should be. In his absence, without his laser focus on her every move, she feels smaller even than she did while he was alive. She doesn’t miss him—she just doesn’t know who she is without him to tell her.

During the days between his death and the group’s arrival, there was no pressure for her to figure it out. She found herself behaving in ways that would have irritated Ed, brushing Sophia’s hair at bedtime until it shone, drawing with her in the mornings, sitting idle as Daryl and the girl played chess or slept. She liked that, the way no one glared at her as she giggled with her daughter, the way no one yelled at her for laziness or hit her for wasting time. All the people she could be are crowded within her, funny, flirty, hard, merciless, so angry that she thinks, sometimes, it might be easier to stay the woman Ed made her: mousy, timid, nondescript.

Even in the two days since they reunited with the group, Carol has been aware that this is their expectation of her. She is a mother, a caretaker; she serves and cleans and doesn’t have opinions about things that matter. Of all of them, only Daryl, for some reason, does not make her feel like she is supposed to be one thing or another. He observes her, makes her feel like he is noting each shift, but not judging her; learning her, rather. It does not mean anything. He does it with Rick, too, and with Dale. But for Carol, the experience is new: being known without being forced to change.

She rests her head against the window and closes her eyes. Lori is singing something, humming the lyrics she doesn’t remember, and Sophia and Carl are still playing games. Daryl has neither spoken to Carol nor looked at her since their conversation on the steps. The closest he has come is telling Sophia to ask permission to play chess—as though Carol would suddenly keep her daughter from him, as though what was said between them has altered what she thinks of him. She is sickened by the thought of him watching her kneel before Ed; she cannot remember it without wanting to weep. But she is apathetic about what seems to have disturbed him so, his failure to intervene. The damage was done years ago, and has only been repeated since. She was ruined within a year of her marriage, when she’d already been on her knees countless times, once with a broken collarbone, another time with a knife at her throat. She was a slow learner, she thinks, and blinks as her eyes fill. But once she learnt, she never forgot: neither who her husband was nor who she was meant to be.

They stop at a farm stand in the middle of nowhere for lunch, and she keeps an eye out for Daryl without really thinking about it. He limps badly when he gets out the Chevy, stiff from having been seated for so long, and she sends Sophia to him with a snack when he doesn’t come to get one himself. But the girl returns after a few minutes with the Slim Jim in her hands, her cheeks pink, her bottom lip quivering when her mother asks what the matter is. Crouching in front of her, Carol tries again.

“Sweetheart?” she says softly and brushes a finger under the girl’s chin to encourage her to lift her gaze.

“He doesn’t want it.” Sophia’s eyes are rimmed with pink, and she holds the Slim Jim out to Carol. “And he says to leave him the hell alone.” Her face crumples as she repeats the message, and she shoves Carol with the hand holding the snack, dropping it in the dirt and slipping past before her mother can stop her. Shaken, Carol picks up the Slim Jim and watches her daughter climb into the back of the Dodge, Carl on her heels asking loudly what is wrong.

“Everythin’ okay?” T-Dog, who was rambling amiably to her about nothing much before Sophia approached, touches Carol’s shoulder, and she jerks away before she can stop herself.

“Yes. Sorry. Fine, I just—excuse me for a minute, please.”

Every night since Ed died, she has dreamt about sliding the bolt into his neck, right into his brain, pushing and pushing until the frantic look in his eyes dulled and his gurgling scream stopped. The dream is brief and lacking in drama; it is simply a record of everything she sensed in that moment, the smell of fresh blood and the stink of old blood, the pained wheeze of Daryl’s breath, the way Ed tried, fruitlessly, to reach up and stop her like she had tried so many times to stop him.I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, Ed. Every night the dream comes and she welcomes it as a reminder of one of her selves, the most terrifying one, the one most likely to survive.

She is that woman when she walks over to Daryl, who is sulking at the fence alone, arms folded, hands tucked into his armpits. She stops in front of him and he stares at her, his face wary, his biceps bulging. He could knock her out with a single blow: one fist to the temple.

“If you have a problem with me,” she says quietly, clearly. “Then address it with me. Don’t use my daughter.”

“I ain’t the one usin’ her,” he retorts. “You’re sendin’ her to me with coffee an’ snacks like she’s a damn delivery boy.”

“Because every mealtime you’re off somewhere on your own, Daryl. And you need to eat. Drink. Heal.” She gestures at his leg, and he shifts his weight self-consciously. She remembers how he pulled her down into his arms after she checked the wound, remembers crying into his neck, and wonders how they got here from that moment.

“I’m a grown man,” he snarls. “Mind your own business an’ teach your kid to mind hers.”

She does not cringe or apologise. She takes a step closer and looks up at him, the chapped lips and scruffy whiskers, the sharp blue eyes and ragged hair in need of a trim.

“You sound like him,” she says slowly. “You know that? You sound just like Ed.”

She intends to be cruel, and she succeeds, more than she anticipated or wanted. His mouth opens and closes, his lips trembling, and then he looks away from her, swallowing, his eyes hooded. He rocks on his feet, putting all his weight on the injured leg for a second, his breath catching and his biceps rippling with sudden tension. And she understands that he is punishing himself, meting out pain the quickest way he can because she has made him feel so wretched.

“Daryl,” she whispers, and lifts a hand to his arm, the skin over the muscle golden-brown and hot from the sun. He shivers. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah you did,” he says, his voice hoarse. “An’ you’re right.”

“No.” She shakes her head, her fingertips pressing his flesh. She is someone else now, not the woman who finished off her husband, who felt his gristle give beneath the point in his neck. She is someone she had just started to be before the group came back.

“I made her feel like sh*t. Sophia.” He looks down at her hand on his arm. “Just like he did.”

“Not like him.” She wonders what it would be like to hold this man instead of being held; to be the one giving comfort. Her eyes sting. “I don’t understand what happened,” she says, and his gaze flicks to her face when he hears the sorrow in her voice. “I thought we were—becoming friends. But maybe I’ve been asking too much of you.” She tries to smile, and her mouth turns down at the corners. What was she thinking, admitting to him it was easier to talk to him than her girlfriends? “And that’s okay, circ*mstances have changed and the others are here now and—” She falters. “I’ll ask Sophia not to bother you anymore.”

She turns away, dropping her hand, and his fingers close on her wrist, gentle but firm. When she looks back, he is gazing down at the cuff of his forefinger and thumb around her arm, his throat working.

“Don’t do that,” he rasps. “Don’t say that to her.” His eyes slide along her arm to her shoulder, and then past it, and he releases her, flushing. She is aware, suddenly, of the silence from the farm stand, broken only by the murmur of Shane’s voice, a titter from Andrea. Daryl stares at his feet. “Don’t—weare—friends. Becomin’ friends.” He seems to struggle with the word. “Please.” He meets her gaze, his eyes dark and troubled. “Please.”

“If you’re sure,” she says quietly. “You’ve had no choice all this time. You stayed with us because—because you’re a good man.” She gestures behind her. “But you’ve got a choice now. I just want you to know that. Things can be how they were before.” Before he risked his life to find her daughter. Before he watched the child night after night so Carol could placate her husband. Before he saved them both from Ed.

“You’ve gotta choice too.” His discomfort is so obvious that she feels it in her body, the restless twitch of his shoulders as he glances at the people behind her, who are doubtless staring at them. But he does not flee. He frowns at her in concentration, ducking his head and peering at her. “You should choose what’s best for you an’—an’ Soph.”

Soph.She has never heard her daughter called that. Ed deplored nicknames of any kind, and so she never shortened the girl’s name herself. Daryl says it easily, naturally, with a familiarity that reveals how much of his hostility is a lie, a cover for a fondness he doesn’t want to feel, or thinks he shouldn’t. Carol smiles at him, ignoring the tears that gather in the corners of her eyes.

“I can’t choose for her,” she replies, and he nods miserably. “But I’d like it if we could—if you and I could, could be friends. Move forward from everything that’s happened.”

He considers her for a moment, searches her face, and she knows he understands what she means.Leave Ed behind. Leave that night behind.She remembers how angry he was with her when she asked him, two days ago, to disregard what he saw, and she wonders whether he can accept what she is offering. But then he nods.

“I’d like that,” he says, and clears his throat. She smiles again, and turns, and this time he doesn’t stop her. But his voice reaches after her as she walks away. “Thank you.”

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

“Where I come from,” says T-Dog dryly as he starts the truck. “We call that avibe.”

He shoots Daryl a look before returning his eyes to the road, pulling away from the farm stand behind Shane. Daryl leans his shoulder against the window and ignores the heat climbing his neck, one hand resting on the pocket of his jeans, rubbing the edges of the cigarette box inside it. He wants to be alone in the woods, hunting, or simply walking, watching, listening, allowing himself to swallowed by the trees and shadows until he is ready to emerge. Alternatively, he wants to smoke until his throat is raw.

“We’re friends.” He tries the word again, so difficult to say earlier. It is clumsy in his mouth, wrong. Friends don’t think about each other the way he thinks about Carol. And women like Carol aren’t friends with people like him. He scowls at the other man. “‘Kay? You gonna drop it now?”

“Uh huh.” T-Dog’s voice is skeptical. “Half an hour ago she was just someone you gotstuckwith.”

Daryl doesn’t reply, but takes out his cigarettes and lights one, winding down the window of the truck. Heat and noise fill the cab, and T-Dog mutters an oath, but Daryl turns his face into the rush of humid air and inhales, his fingers trembling around the cigarette. Walking past the group to the truck was excruciating, Lori and Andrea staring at him, Shane and Glenn smirking, Dale murmuring “You all right, son?” as Daryl’s ears reddened. Carol had vanished to talk to Sophia, hidden somewhere from them all. Closing his eyes, Daryl leans his head back against the leather seat and thinks of the girl, the confusion and hurt on her face as he sent her away. He might as well have struck her for how cruel he was.

The plan made this morning was to camp for the night in a suburb on the outskirts of Macon—pick a sizeable house and secure it as best they can. But evidently the plan changed at some point, unbeknownst to Daryl, because after a few hours, Rick pulls up at a trailer park along the banks of the Ocmulgee River, a couple miles past the nearest suburb. The signboard readsCamelot, in an old-timey font underlined with the blade of a sword, but the park itself is small, only twenty or so trailers lined up in rows of five.

The afternoon drive, slowed by a truck blocking the road and by a collapsed bridge which necessitated a lengthy detour, has been mercifully free of conversation. All T-Dog says now, his eyes already on Carol as they exit the truck, isYour loss,man, with a shrug which tells Daryl that the other man has decided to take “friends” at face value.

“Should take some down at the river,” Shane calls to Rick as he climbs out his car. “Drive in and clear the ones nearest the water.”

Rick nods, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the late afternoon sun as he squints towards the mobile homes.

“We clear just what we have to. How many trailers you think we need for the—what is it, twelve? Thirteen of us?”

“Three or four,” says Daryl. He lived in one of these parks with Merle for a few years, though theirs had no river at its border. Just dirt, fine orange sand and stones in which nothing would grow except weeds.

Lori yawns and puts her hands on her lower back, stretching it, her stomach pushed outwards. Carol, standing just behind her, murmurs something, and Lori shakes her head. Sophia and Carl are still in the back seat of the Dodge, already knowing the cars will move again, too tired to bother getting out. Daryl, trying not to look at Carol, finds himself looking instead at the back of her daughter’s head through the grubby back window. When he shifts his gaze, irritated with himself, Carol is watching him, her expression kind despite the smudges of exhaustion under her eyes.

The men, except for Daryl and Hershel, go in on foot first to make sure the group won’t end up trapped by a horde at the river’s edge. Frustrated, Daryl clambers with difficulty into the back of the truck, resting a hand on the sun-warmed seat of his bike as he follows their progress through the park. The Ocmulgee is a glistening golden ribbon beyond the last row of trailers, the trees along its banks just starting to lose the vivid green of summer. Only a handful of walkers stumble out to greet the men, easily dispatched, and they clear three trailers while Daryl watches, hauling bodies into the underbrush where the dead grass of the trailer park ends abruptly. When Rick looks back and lifts an arm, beckoning, Daryl raises a hand in acknowledgement and calls down to Lori.

“Rick says it’s clear!”

Making camp is always work, even when there is adequate shelter, and Daryl, tired of feeling useless, throws himself into it. While the others divide up the accommodation, he gathers wood, using a hatchet from the RV to chop spindly branches into smaller pieces. There is a makeshift firepit on the riverbank, blackened stones in the sandy hollow, a ring of pebbles around it, and he lights a fire there, bending awkwardly over the wood because he cannot crouch.

Glenn and Shane are in the river when Daryl goes down to haul water, swimming in their underwear, the skin of their chests and backs white against the dark brown of their tans. Shane skims a hand across the surface of the water, sending spray towards Daryl as he dunks a pail in the shallows. There is a streak of walker blood still on the cop’s face, dripping pink from his jaw.

“You comin’ in?” he asks and rakes his wet hair back with both hands. Daryl shakes his head, standing up carefully with the pail.

“Should be further downstream,” he tells them shortly. “Not gettin’ your filth in the drinkin’ water.”

Laughing, Glenn eases himself back, arms outspread, until he is floating, and paddles lazily a little further down the river. The water is clear, tadpoles flicking their tails near the toes of Daryl’s boots at the water’s edge. When he turns to ascend the short slope, the roofs of the trailers are gilded by the setting sun, appearing briefly beautiful as they are bathed in a deep, luxurious light.

He has been assigned to a trailer with Shane, T-Dog, and Dale. The old man opts for the RV instead, which means each of the men gets their own space: one of two drab bedrooms, the curtains sewn out of cheap, yellowing lace, or the living room. There are a handlebar and a chair in the shower—the plumbing doesn’t work—and the nightstand in one room is scattered with asthma and steroid pumps, and a nebuliser mask, the mouthpiece smeared with grease and grime. Daryl claims the couch in the living room, which smells of urine and mothballs, and sits there for moment, staring at his reflection in the screen of the old TV.

In the trailer next door, Carol and Sophia are staying with the Grimes family. Daryl hasn’t spoken to either of them since the group arrived at the trailer park, although when he catches Carol’s eye as they set up camp, she smiles at him, and he tries to smile back. He could feel the pulse in her wrist when he caught hold of it earlier, like a moth trapped beneath the skin. She didn’t pull away from his grasp. Just stood there patiently, waiting for him to speak, unafraid of him despite his rudeness, despite the way he spoke to her child.

Dinner is a pot of pasta with canned mushrooms added, drenched in Ricos Gourmet Nacho Cheese Sauce from a giant can. Carol cooks it over the firepit, chatting to Lori while the deputy’s wife keeps an eye on Carl and Sophia in the river. They haven’t gone in far, the water up to their knees and their jeans rolled up, but they are splashing each other, their laughter glancing off the water as they try to catch tadpoles in their hands.

Once he is sure there is nothing more that needs doing, at least until after dinner, Daryl sits on the steps of his trailer and smokes. The sun has dropped behind the mobile homes, the river no longer shining but darkly opaque. There is an almost homely feeling to the place at this hour, the campfire crackling, the group chatting and laughing, the taste of tobacco on Daryl’s tongue as he watches them. But he cannot properly relax. He does not know how to approach Sophia, how to fix what he has broken between them. He is afraid she will be frightened of him now, that any overture he makes will be unwelcome, or, worse, seem threatening.

He doesn’t go to the fire when Carol starts scooping pasta into bowls and plates, stubbing out his cigarette and waiting for the others to be served. She moves among them almost unseen, distributing food, barely acknowledged by the people for whom she has cooked. He wonders who played her role while she was separated from the group, who laundered and catered and took care of all the things that have become so time consuming in this world. She still favours the shoulder Ed dislocated, resting the arm when she can. Daryl thinks of the ridge of bone in the wrong place, freckled skin pulled taut over it, and acid burns the back of his throat.

He is about to get to his feet and grab a plate of food when Sophia comes over. At first, he starts to rise so he can go into the trailer, out of her way; save her the unpleasantness of having to acknowledge him. But then he realises there is nothing in this direction but him. Realises she is carrying a plate of food too large to be her own, her eyes downcast, her brow furrowed. Panicked, he glances towards the fire. Beside the pot, Carol stands looking at him, her expression anxious, and he sinks back down onto the step, a lump in his throat. She sent the girl. Gave him the chance he didn’t know how to find for himself.

Sophia stops at the foot of the steps, both hands on the bowl, her hair curtaining her face as she puts his meal down on the bottom step. There is force in the gesture, the tin dish clattering, and she turns away without a word.

“Sophia,” he says, his voice dry and scratchy. “Need to say somethin’ to you.”

She stops, but doesn’t look at him, her arms at her sides, the thin fabric of her T-shirt rippling across her shoulder-blades in a breeze off the river. He gets one shot at this, and he gets it only because Carol sent her daughter here and trusted him not to f*ck up again. He grips his knees, clears his throat. The skin on her elbows is dry in two small patches, and there is a drawing on one of her wrists, in black Sharpie: a smiley face.

“I was real mean an’ rude earlier,” he says. “Said some sh—said some stuff that wasn’t true.” He gulps for air before continuing, his fingers working the denim over his knees. “Want you to know I’m sorry. Ain’t gonna do it again.”

His words are amplified by the water, coming back to his ears in the brief silence that follows them.

“How do you know?” She half-turns, her voice scornful, her hands curling into fists at her sides. But her expression is open and needy despite the bite in her voice, her eyes shimmering. He leans towards the vulnerability in her, not because he knows how to answer it, but because he wants to shield her, hide the weakness in her the way he learnt to hide it in himself around her age.

“I don’t,” he says hoarsely. “Not really.”

Her chin wobbles, and she bends her head, hair slipping across her profile.

“But I’m gonna try. Your momma—” His voice catches. Twilight has turned the sky indigo, and the conversation from the fire is muted, slower and sleepier as people finish their meals. “She’s not nothin’ to me. She’s—” Something pulls in him, like a muscle bearing too much weight, a wrenching in his chest that winds him for a second. “She’s my friend.”

The girl peers at him, the same hungry, unguarded look in her eyes. It makes him anxious, jittery with an irrational fear that Ed will appear behind her.Hide it, he wants to tell her.You’re not supposed to care so much. Instead, he shifts to one end of the step and gestures to the space beside him.

The quickness with which she accepts the invitation unnerves him, the conversation suddenly freighted with a responsibility to which he doubts he is equal. She perches on the edge of the step, her arms folded and her shoulders hunched, and he looks down at her sneakers next to his worn boots. Across the river, the stars are coming out, white pinpricks that make the sky between them seem darker. The pasta in his bowl on the bottom step has congealed.

“Ain’t had many friends.” He doesn’t know where the words come from, and he is embarrassed by them. But the girl turns her head slightly, listening. “Grew up believin’ it was better to count on me and only me.”

He glances at her, the clear, perceptive blue eyes, the pointed chin and wind-ruffled hair, and his next admission is a little easier to make.

“So I ain’t real good at—at makin’ friends. Havin’ friends.” He coughs awkwardly. “Trustin’ people.”

It is too much, he is sure, for her to have to grapple with. But she nods, a tiny dip of her chin, and looks away from him, out across the water.

“I had a friend,” she says thoughtfully. “Other than Carl. Lauren.”

“Before?” he asks.

“When I was little.” She scrunches her nose. “Like…seven?” She uncrosses her arms and picks at the nails of one hand. “But Mama said she couldn’t come to our house, and sometimes Mama couldn’t take me to Lauren’s.” She gives a small sigh. “So she made a different friend.”

“Sorry.” He wishes he had the courage to tell her his own version of that story. Bobby Starke, aged eight. Kid with a shock of blonde hair and a mother who ran all the bake sales at school. Sophia shrugs, and fiddles with a tiny hangnail.

“Daddy used to tell Mama he was sorry,” she says quietly. Daryl jerks his head to stare at her, thrown by the change in topic. She meets his eyes, her words slow and deliberate. “Afterwards…he’d say he was so sorry.” Her face hardens. “But he kept on—and kept on—and he was neverreallysorry.”

“Yeah.” Daryl drops his head, rubbing his hands over his face tiredly. The girl shivers at his side, though the evening is warm, and he listens for Carol’s voice among the others, soft and low. Her head is flecked with silver in the firelight, between Dale’s and T-Dog’s, her back to the pair on the steps of the trailer. Daryl feels Sophia’s eyes on him, her hands becoming still in her lap.

“The person who hurt you,” she says tentatively, and her voice seems to spin off into the dusk, so that her next words come from far away. “They weren’t sorry either?”

He freezes, the breath stopping in his lungs, his ears ringing with shame. He thought she might have seen his scars while he was unconscious, and he was right. He pulls away from her without thinking, edging closer to the stair rail, and she watches him in silence. He wants her to leave, to let him slink into the trailer and hide for the rest of the night. Instead, she reaches over and touches the back of his hand with her fingertips.

“See,” she whispers, and pulls the cuff of her jeans up to just above her ankle, pushing the top of her sock down with her thumb. He frowns at the knobbly bone in confusion, the bluish skin below, and then he notices it: a white scar, a thin line parallel to her Achilles tendon, disappearing into her sneaker. His eyes flick to hers, startled, and she gives a small, bitter smile that makes her look decades older.

“Daddy had a pocketknife,” she says.

“He—Christ.”

She tugs her sock up, her cuff down, blinking rapidly.

“I told Mama I cut it on a desk at school,” she whispers. “But he did it while she was in the shower.” She hesitates. “He liked it. I could—see.” Her eyes slide to his lap, his crotch, and Daryl’s stomach drops. The girl reaches out and grasps his thumb, a reflex, her fingers like ice. “It was only once,” she says, as though that is supposed to mitigate the horror of what she is saying, and then her face folds, her lips trembling.

His movement is as instinctive, as unconsidered as hers, the hand she is not holding reaching for her and cupping the back of her head as she starts to cry, his body turning as he pulls her against his chest. She releases his thumb and grips his shirt instead, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders, engulfing them, cradling her against him as she weeps. She does so silently, like her mother, her hair warm and tangled around his fingers, and her chest heaves with each sob. Her grief distresses him almost more than Carol’s, reminds him what it was like the first time his father struck him: theshockof it, the sense of a betrayal so profound he felt it at a cellular level.

“‘M so sorry,” he murmurs to the child. “‘M so sorry, Soph. ‘M so sorry.” He is swaying, rocking her as she cries, the fabric of his shirt soaked through. Now and then, she kneads his chest like a kitten, trying to get a better grip, perhaps, or simply making sure he is there. Later, on the couch in the trailer, he will touch the stiff, dry salt left behind in the cotton, and he will cover his mouth with a hand, muffling a single, harsh sob. But the child doesn’t need his grief, or the knowledge that he is as lost as she is, and so he holds her with a confidence he doesn’t feel, murmuring a comfort he knows cannot be enough.

xxxx

Sophia says nothing to Carol about the conversation with Daryl. The girl returns to the firepit as the others start drifting towards their trailers, her face flushed and her eyes puffy, and she smiles at her mother, though her mouth is unsteady. Carol stops scraping out the pot she cooked in and draws her daughter against her side, kissing the top of her head. Her hair smells faintly of tobacco, of the woody, familiar scent that is Daryl's. There is no sign of him outside his trailer.

“I love you,” she whispers to the child. Sophia just nods. “Ready for bed?”

She leaves her daughter tucked into bed on a mattress next to Carl’s, and goes back to the fire, where the dishes await her. Dale’s voice comes from direction of the RV, holding forth on something mechanical to T-Dog. Shane, Rick and Glenn are playing poker in one of the trailers, and Maggie and Hershel have doubtless gone to bed already. Daryl will take first watch, she assumes, the way he always does.

The pasta pot is full of dirty plates, the fire nothing but embers. She picks up the pot, biting her lip as her shoulder protests, and carries it downstream a way, to a sandy patch of bank. She arranges the dishes in the shallows, embedding them in the sand, and sits down, cross-legged, letting the current rinse them for her. The damp seeps through her pants, but she doesn’t much mind. The night is warm enough, mosquitoes humming in the swampy ground to her left, where thick grasses grow in the mud.

“Ain’t safe here.” His voice barely breaks the silence, spreading over it instead like rough linen over glass. She doesn’t turn around, but listens to his quiet, limping footsteps as he descends the embankment.

“Everyone’s nearby,” she replies, and looks up at him as he stops beside her. He is barefoot, his feet lean and surprisingly beautiful, and he is holding a threadbare washcloth in one hand, his dinner plate in the other. His face is in shadow.

“Not near enough.” He lowers himself to the sand, coming down on his good side so he can arrange his bad leg, his heel in the water once it is straightened in front of him. He bends his other leg in an imitation of her posture, the sole of his foot against the side of his other knee, and bends forward to add his bowl to the others in the shallows. She can see his face once he is seated, his skin moon white, his eyes dark. “By the time anyone’s got here, you’re bit.”

“But you’re here now,” she replies teasingly, and he looks away, his fingers pulling at a thread in the washcloth. She gazes out across the river, at a thicket of rivercane on the opposite bank, just visible in the ambient light from the camp. The tin plates jostle each other in the current, their edges muttering beneath sound of the water. Daryl leans forward and plucks one out, dunking his washcloth and scrubbing at the tin. She frowns and extends a hand to stop him, her fingers grazing the fine hairs on his wrist. His hand stops moving instantly. She can hear him breathing.

“Don’t do that. You didn’t come out to clean plates.” She lets her fingers settle on his skin for a second. “I’ll finish up. You go and bathe.”

But as she moves her hand away, he continues wiping the plate, frowning.

“You cooked,” he mutters. “Shouldn’ be washin’ up too.” He glances at her shoulder, and she flexes it self-consciously.

“Everyone does their part,” she replies. “This is mine.”

He snorts, rinsing the plate and picking up another. Sighing, she does the same, scraping sauce off the bottom with a wire scrubber.

“Should have a knife on you. Always.” He looks over at her hands as she works a slice of mushroom free. He is still fretting, clearly, about her being here alone.

“I don’t know how to use one properly,” she reminds him. “Safer just to run away.”

“Can’t always run.” She remembers the walker’s hands on the back of her shirt.Carol, duck.Daryl’s gaze shifts to her face. “You and Sophia both. You need to learn.”

“Can you teach us?” She doesn’t give herself time to hesitate before she asks, and she rushes on. “Sophia said a while ago you might—you’d maybe—”

“Yeah. Sure.” He sounds shy, and his eyes drop to the dish he is holding. “Ain’t much of a teacher, though.”

“You’ve taught someone before?” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Then we’ll be the judge of that.”

He gives a grunt of laughter, and she smiles to herself as she stacks the plate and takes up another. The light in the RV winks out. Only two of the trailers still have hurricane lamps burning in them. The silhouette of the rivercane stand has merged with the night, a dense wall of darkness beyond the uneven lustre of the river.

“She okay?” Daryl asks suddenly. “Sophia.”

Carol looks at him, his head bent as he scrubs, his teeth worrying his bottom lip.

“She seems fine,” she tells him gently.

“Told her I was sorry.” He clears his throat. “Not sure she believed me.”

Carol tastes salt on her tongue, and tips her head back a little, the Milky Way a blur above her.

“Ed,” she says with difficulty. “He used to apologise.” She closes her eyes. “He stopped bothering a few years ago, but she remembers.”

“She told me.” Neither of them is washing dishes anymore. Daryl’s voice is strained. “Meant a lot that she—that she let me speak with her. Thanks.”

Carol turns her head. He is watching her, his face earnest.

“Like I said,” she tells him. “She trusts you. She’s—trying to trust you.”

His brow creases, and he looks away.

“What…what ‘bout you?” he asks, so quietly that she only just catches the question. Her heart constricts at his hesitation, but even then, she cannot lie to him; won’t lie, because she senses he will know if she does.

“I’m trying too,” she whispers. “Ed, he—it’s hard, Daryl.” She lifts a hand to her face, traces the tender spot lingering on her jaw. “Not because of who you are, but because of who he was. What he—did.”

He nods, meeting her eyes, and she can see him trying to be okay with what she has said. But there is disappointment along with the understanding, a rueful acceptance that saddens her.

They scrub without speaking for a while, stacking plates and forks until there is only the pot left. They tip it onto its side and let some river sand into it with the water, and then Daryl hauls it between them and they start on opposite sides, using the sand to help clean away the remains of dinner.

“It’s silly,” Carol says as she rinses out her scrubber in the shallows. “I always thought that if I got away, or if Ed died, I’d be free to…to become anyone I wanted to be.”

It is not something she would say to anyone else; it is too whimsical a thought for a middle-aged woman, in a world where their survival is in question from day to day. But in the deepening darkness by the river, her knuckles bumping Daryl’s from time to time as they work, she offers him the confession as a promise of the friendship they agreed to forge. She means for him to be amused. Instead, he stops wiping and looks at her.

“Who d’you wanna be?” he asks intently. She blushes, embarrassed.

“It doesn’t matter, because it turns out I’m still the same person I always was,” she says lightly, and chuckles. “Quiet and drab and afraid of everything.”

He stares at her, and her smile fades, misery leaking from where she tries to keep it hidden, seeping into her skin. Her eyes prick with tears, and she looks down into the pot, at their hands so close together, her knuckles an ugly red from washing, her nails short and blunt. As she watches, Daryl’s thumb brushes across the back of her hand, a quick, deliberate movement.

“That ain’t you.” His voice is husky. She hears Ed at her side.Stupid bitch. Useless c*nt. Turn around. I can’t look at that ugly old face while I’m f*ckin’ you.Daryl’s thumb slips over her hand again, drawing her back to the trailer park, to the river and the darkness, to him. “Carol? That ain’t you.”

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Rick is taken aback when Daryl asks to look at a map the next morning as they pack up camp. He pulls a creased page out his pocket and spreads it over a boulder near the edge of the river, and Daryl finds more or less the position of the trailer park.

“Straight to Savannah today on the backroads,” Rick says, tracing a path across the page. Daryl grunts and taps a grey shape close to the black font labelling the city.

“There’s a surplus store near the old airbase,” he tells the sheriff’s deputy. “Need to stop there.”

Rick squints at him. “You outta bolts?”

Daryl shrugs. “Can always use more.” The tips of his ears redden. “There’s people in the group who ain’t armed. An’ they should be.”

Rick frowns. “Like who?”

“Carol.” The colour spreads to Daryl’s face. The deputy looks at him in puzzlement.

“Carol?”

“Yeah.”

“But she—she’s not—she can’t—” Rick stammers.

“Wantsta learn.” Daryl scowls at the other man. “Her an’ Sophia. So I’m gonna teach them.”

“Sophia?” Rick looks past Daryl towards the cars and gives a slightly hysterical laugh. “Carl isn’t even allowed a weapon, Daryl.”

“This ain’t about Carl,” Daryl snaps. “We gonna stop at the surplus store or not?”

“What’s goin’ on, fellas?” Shane sidles up, a mug of coffee in his hand. Daryl frowns. Breakfast ended an hour ago. The cop catches the look and smirks. “Got Carol to whip up another pot. Need the energy for the road.”

“Daryl wants to stop at a surplus store near Hunter Army Airfield,” Rick says. “To pick up weapons for Carol an’ Sophia.”

Shane guffaws. “You’re kiddin’ me.”

“Don’t seem like them bein’ armed is a decision for either of you to make,” Daryl says coolly. “Only choice we make as a group is whether to stop or not. If we don’t, I’ll go on a run myself.”

“With a bullet in your leg?” Shane snorts. “Sure.”

“We do need ammo.” The deputy is looking warily between the two men. “Might as well head that way. If it’s overrun, we turn back.”

“Thanks,” says Daryl before Shane can interject again, and turns towards the cars. He limps over to where Carol is wiping out a coffee pot, a tiny gas stove at her feet. They save it for emergencies; evidently Shane’s thirst counts.

She looks up and smiles wanly as he reaches her. There are shadows under her eyes, as though she didn’t sleep enough, and Daryl tries to remember if he saw her eating at breakfast.

“Gonna stop at a military surplus store near Savannah,” he says. “See if they got somethin’ that’ll work for you and Sophia.”

Her face brightens. “Thank you, Daryl.”

He shrugs, scowling self-consciously at how pleased she is.

“You eaten?” he asks abruptly, looking past her ear. She stiffens slightly.

“I’ll have something in the car.” The lightness is gone from her voice. “Too much to do this morning.”

He shifts his gaze to her face, and she drops her eyes. There is tiredness in every muscle of her body, a softness, a vagueness, that makes him tense with worry.Bad dreams?he wants to ask, but the question feels too intimate. Her lashes are dark against her skin, and he can see the freckles scattered across her collarbone, a faded constellation that draws his gaze into the dips and hollows above the bone. Halfway along one clavicle there is a scar, small and white and crooked.

“Broke it. Bone, uh, pierced the skin.” She is watching him, her eyes luminous above the shadows, her mouth pulling into a smile. She touches a finger to the scar, and Daryl’s hand twitches at his side. “Told everyone I fell down the stairs.” She laughs quietly. “Didn’t tell them I had a little help.”

“Ain’t funny,” he says harshly, and her hand drops, her face grey and weary once more.

“I know,” she replies, and bends to lift the gas stove. In the truck, T-Dog sounds the horn and jerks his head at Daryl, beckoning him to take his seat so they can leave.

xxxx

The truth is, she cannot sleep now that they are back with the group. She cuddles up to Sophia each night and tries to allow the child’s slow, deep breathing to draw her into rest, but it does not help. When she does sleep, she dreams of Ed, the worst of her memories drifting to the surface, until coming violently awake is a mercy, the featureless dark of after-midnight a respite. When dawn comes, her eyes are sandy and dry, her head filled with snapshots of moments she’d rather forget again.

They reach a bleak industrial area in the vicinity of Hunter Army Airfield in the middle of the afternoon, and circle the same three-block section of tile showrooms and mega shoe stores twice before Rick figures out where the surplus store is. Walkers wander the streets listlessly, the blood on their clothes brown with age, skin peeling from their faces and arms. The convoy runs them down if they are in the way; there are few enough of the dead that they’re manageable, but Carol flinches with each thump against the side of the car, and Sophia’s hand creeps into hers.

There is a fenced-in parking lot between Drop Zone Military Surplus and a store selling frozen crumbed chicken at “factory prices”. From the latter, a sickening, fishy smell extends across the block. The air tastes of rot, and Lori gags delicately as they climb out the Dodge in the carpark, lifting her shirt to cover her mouth and nose like a mask. Shane stabs a walker in the head as it lurches around the side of the RV. It is dressed in blue overalls and a cap, both embroidered with the wordsAllbright Truck Hire. The cop kicks its ribs once it is down, wipes his knife on its overalls.

“I’m goin’ in.” Daryl has his crossbow slung over his shoulder. “Who’s comin’?”

“Isn’t your leg still bust?” asks Andrea. “What if you have to run?”

“‘Ll fight instead,” he says shortly, and looks around. “Who’s comin’?”

Carol waits until the decision has been made, and Rick and Shane are readying themselves, finding bolt cutters and checking their weapons, before she goes over to where Daryl waits for them. His eyes are on the entrance to Drop Zone. The glass doors are padlocked, but the glass is webbed with cracks, and two of the high windows are shattered. To the left of the door is a skip piled high with trash bags that have been torn open by animals or walkers or starving people. There is no movement visible inside the store. Daryl’s demeanour doesn’t change as she comes to stand beside him, his fingers restless on the strap of his crossbow.

“Stay safe,” she says quietly. “Don’t—don’t take any risks just for a couple of knives.”

He raises his bow suddenly, startling her, and aims it across her line of sight, towards the far corner of the lot. A bolt whizzes. Near a white station wagon fifty feet away, a walker drops: a woman, her hair long and dyed fire-engine red.

“You stay safe too.” He looks down at the bow before meeting her eyes fleetingly. “Ain’t gonna take any risks.” He nods at her in reassurance and walks towards the fallen walker to retrieve his bolt. His step is lopsided, his injured thigh obviously stiff, and she makes a mental note to heat water for a compress tonight.

The men are in and out of the store in under twenty minutes. The others wait in the vehicles, faces pressed to the windows, and as soon as Rick appears, a khaki duffel bag in one hand, his gun in the other, Lori whispersthank God, and starts to climb out the car. But Rick and Shane are slamming the Drop Zone doors behind them, dragging the heavy skip across the entrance to serve as a barricade. Rick runs towards the car, Shane at his heels, and as Lori opens her door his voice becomes audible.Go go go.

Lori is back in the car while he is still yelling, the RV and the truck starting up as Shane flings himself into the Hyundai. But there is no sign of Daryl, and when Rick opens the driver’s side door of the Dodge, Carol leans between the seats.

“Where’s Daryl?”

Rick glances at her. There is blood splattered across his face, mingled with perspiration, and there is a scratch on his forehead.

“Inside the storeroom. We gotta come back for him. We gotta get the rest of you out of here.”

“We can’t leave him.” Carol stares at the deputy in horror. “You have to go back in.”

“No.” Lori grabs Rick’s arm. “No no no.”

At Carol’s side, Sophia swipes at her face, her shoulder quivering against Carol’s. Dale pulls the RV up next to the Dodge, frowning. Carol opens her car door and climbs out, reaching up to touch the old man’s arm as he leans out the window.

“Where’s—” Dale begins.

“Still inside,” she says. Dale turns off the engine. “He’s still inside. Someone has to go back for him.”

“He’s in the damn storeroom and there’s a crowd of walkers five deep against that door.” Shane comes over, the Hyundai stopped behind the Winnebago, gulping water from a bottle. His shirt is torn, his hair grey with dust. He shakes his head. “He shoulda run instead of lockin’ himself in.”

“He’s got a bullet in his leg.” The words are loud and furious and unsteady, and Shane stares at her. “You should have helped him get out. You have to go andgethim.”

“Now listen here.” Shane’s face twists, and he walks over to Carol. “Until you’re volunteerin’ to go in there yourself, how 'bout you leave the decisions to those of us riskin’ our lives?” He stabs a finger at the air front of her nose on the final word, and she steps back, expecting the gesture to be followed by a blow, her hands lifting instinctively to protect her face.

“That’s enough, Shane,” snaps Dale. He has climbed out of the RV, Glenn and the Greenes on his heels. T-Dog stops the Chevy on the other side of Rick’s car. “How many walkers are we talking? Rick?”

The deputy is out the Dodge, Lori clinging to his arm. He meets Carol’s eyes and looks away quickly.

“Forty? Forty-five?” The deputy shrugs hopelessly. “They came out of nowhere. Must be an entrance we didn’t see.”

Behind her, Carol can hear the doors rattle against the skip, the muted moan of the dead.Daryl. Sophia is still in the car, watching the adults through the window, her cheeks wet.

“Rick,” Carol says softly. “Please. We can lure them out and kill them. He would do it for you.”

T-Dog appears at her side, putting an arm around her shoulders and giving her a squeeze.

“Carol’s right,” says Andrea. She is leaning against the Hyundai listening, her eyes on Rick. “Daryl wouldn’t leave any one of us. We can’t leave him.”

“Fine. Okay? Fine. Just let me think for a second.” The deputy runs a hand over his face, smearing blood into his eyebrows from the wound in his head, and Lori says something to him too quiet for the others to hear, her whining intonation nonetheless clear. He lifts his other hand to stop her speaking and addresses Shane. “If we fire shots out here, there’s no telling how many more we’ll attract. Gotta use knives. The hatchet in the RV.” He looks around at the others. The doors of Drop Zone clatter and thud, and Carol thinks of Daryl’s thumb gliding over the back of her hand, his arms around her as her shoulder throbbed, the warmth of his skin beneath her hand as they hid under the bed.Hurry up.

The men are still dividing up weapons when the flare goes off. Carol is standing behind the Hyundai, metres from the skip, above which she can see the hands and faces of walkers pressed to the glass doors. As the store lights up in red, as a crack sounds from inside, the movements of the dead seem to slow, their heads turning towards the light, their fingers trailing off the glass.

“sh*t.” Andrea, who has been sitting in the back seat of the Hyundai, stands up, but Carol is ahead of her, turning towards the cluster of men at the Dodge as she runs for the skip.

“Open the doors!” Carol yells. “Open the doors!”

She can smell the fire as she reaches the skip, Glenn and T-Dog behind her. The light inside the store is turning to a reddish haze as it fills with smoke, the stink of melting plastic and fabric worse than the stench of the skip. She and Glenn push one end of the barricade as T-Dog hauls the other, and as it rolls out the way the doors burst open and a walker staggers out, the end of its ponytail on fire, its jaws snapping as it sees the people ahead of it.

The fire is spreading quickly: the store is crammed with uniforms, sleeping bags and tents that go up like dry leaves, walkers wandering into the blaze and spreading it as they jostle each other. Two more of the dead exit the store, but Glenn is waiting, blood from the first woman on the machete in his hand. Behind the Hyundai, Carol crouches, eyes on the door, heart in her throat.

She recognises his gait before Glenn does, the machete already rising as Carol runs forward to get between Daryl and the blade. The hunter is coughing and coughing, a black canvas backpack over his shoulder with his crossbow, his bad leg dragging. In one hand he holds a gun—a flare gun, she realises—and in the other his knife, the blade and handle thick with gore.

“Let’s go!” Shane yells as she reaches Daryl. “Let’s move!”

Xxxx

He cannot stop coughing, every breath taking the smoke deeper into his lungs, and his leg has stopped throbbing and begun to hum instead, the pain a high-pitched vibration through muscle and bone. In the back of the Hyundai, he gasps for air, rolling onto his side and heaving, realising dimly his head is in Carol’s lap. He tries to sit up and a spasm shakes him, the sound of his coughing drowning out the roar of the engine.

“Lie down.” Her voice, dreamlike and tender in the clamour of the convoy, stops his reflex to throw off the hand she lays on his shoulder. He sags beneath the press of her fingers, and obeys, his eyes watering. The flare gun is still in his hand, his fingers locked around it. The car swerves, and one of the other vehicles passes it, the light in the backseat dimmed by a cloud of dust for a moment. He wheezes, and tries to sit up once more, but her hand cups his shoulder, her thumb making circles just below his collarbone, and he gives up.

“Slowly.” Carol bends over him as he crumples into her lap, one hand on his side, and he blinks at the back of Shane’s seat. “Try to breathe slowly.”

He nods, his cheek rubbing her thigh, and closes his eyes. The car takes a corner hard, flinging him back against Carol’s belly, and her hands shift to hold him in place, her arm across his abdomen. Against the back of his head, her stomach muscles are taut, the undersides of her breasts brushing his ear and his temple as she bends over him again.

“Let me take the gun,” she says gently. Her fingers curl over his, and he tries to loosen his grip, his knuckles stiff and a cramp across his palm. Her hand coaxes his fingers one by one to release the weapon, and when he at last drops it, she slides her hand into his and holds it, tucking her arm back against his stomach. Her other hand grazes his hair, and careful fingers comb the strands off his forehead. He is drenched in sweat, blood streaking his arms, and there is a cut on the back of his neck where a walker pushed him into the edge of a metal shelf.

“Gonna—make you—dirty,” he croaks. Her fingers smooth his hair back, again and again, the sensation sweeter, more delicate, than any he has felt for years.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. The car squeals around a corner. “It’s okay.” But a second later she tenses, pulling away slightly from his head. “You’re bleeding.”

“Shelf,” he manages. Pain shivers through his thigh. “Fell, is all.”

“You need stitches.” Her hand, wrapped in the edge of her top, presses down on the wound. He misses her fingers in his hair.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Dumb.”

“Dumb as sh*t,” says Shane from the front, his voice filled with exhilaration. “f*ckin’ dangerous redneck bravado, that entire goddamn excursion. But Rick got a bag full of ammo. Wasn’t a total waste of time.”

Daryl coughs. In the backpack at Carol’s feet, there are more flare guns and some knives, a length of rope and a few pairs of fingerless gloves. He found weapons he thinks might work for both mother and daughter. Not a total waste of time.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Carol’s voice cuts through the ringing in his ears.

“Don’ think so.” He fought his way out the store blindly, in thick smoke, made it only because most of the walkers had followed the flare he shot towards the opposite end of the showroom. Carol leaves the edge of her T-shirt wadded against his neck and glides her fingertips over the perspiration on his forehead. He wishes he could sleep here, in her lap, let her hands and her voice soothe the pain in his leg and the dry burn in his lungs.

“Sophia—”

“She’s with Rick and Lori.”

He coughs again and opens his eyes. Andrea is peering at him, turned in her seat beside Shane. Her eyes flick to Carol, and back to Daryl.

“They were gonna go back in and get you, you know,” she says, studying him.

“No need.” It hadn’t occurred to him that they would come back for him. They left Merle. Why wouldn’t they leave him, especially when his predicament was of his own making?

“Carol thought there was a need.” The blonde’s voice is dry, her mouth twitching into a smile he can’t decipher right now.

“He found Sophia.” The raw feeling in Carol’s voice is jarring after Andrea’s amusem*nt, and the occupants of the car are suddenly very quiet. Carol’s arm tightens around his belly, and he squeezes, tentatively, the hand she has tucked in his.

“Well, it weren’t you or Sophia runnin’ in there, was it,” Shane says.

“Asshole.” Daryl coughs as he speaks, and the cop chuckles.

“Don’t get too cosy on my backseat now.”

Mortified, Daryl squirms out from under Carol’s arm and drags himself into a seated position, slumping against the door of the car. His breath is a thin whine for a moment after he sits up, and he is briefly freezing without the warmth of Carol’s body. He hugs himself, and doesn’t look at her, though he can feel her watching him. Fresh blood trickles down the back of his neck.

xxxx

They stop in a suburb of Savannah, a wealthy area where the houses are widely spaced and many-storied. The bunker is half an hour away, according to Rick, but he’d rather approach it in the morning than just as evening arrives. They park outside an old Victorian home, the wraparound porch sheltered by a wrought iron structure from which the last, desiccated strands of a grapevine hang. Glenn, Dale and Shane go in to clear the house, and drag out the body of an elderly woman in a pair of cotton pyjamas, her eyes filmy and her flesh withered. The front yard is leafy, the property extending to a patch of public ground that obscures the next residence with tall trees. Smoke smudges the sky in the direction of the airbase. The fire is still burning.

They enter the house in silence, collective exhaustion narrowing their focus to the necessary tasks and nothing else. Carol trudges to the kitchen and begins to go through cupboards, Glenn brings some of their food supplies in from the RV, and Daryl disappears. He drank some water in the Hyundai once he was sitting up and his breathing was easier, taking the bottle from Andrea with muttered thanks, and he did not speak to Carol again for the rest of the drive here. As she stands in the kitchen counting onions, she can feel the weight of his head in her lap again, the hot seep of his blood against her belly. Maybe he has gone to Hershel for stitches. The thought comforts her.

But when he reappears later, the gore washed from his skin and his hair damp, the cut on his neck is still open. He finds her towards the end of dinner, and holds out two leather sheaths, one smaller than the other, his gaze on her shoulder.

“Teach you as soon as we get a moment,” he says. “Keep it on you meanwhile. You an’ Soph.”

The knives have knuckle dusters and long gleaming blades, so sharp that she is afraid to touch her finger to the tips. When she draws hers, Carol tilts it towards the light of a hurricane lamp and watches the metal turn gold.

“Thank you,” she says, wonder in her voice. He grunts and turns away without making eye contact. Above the collar of his shirt, the gash gapes, deep pink and glistening. “Daryl, that needs stitches.”

“Hershel’s asleep already,” he mutters, hesitating but not turning around. “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

“I can do it.” Later, she wonders whether she would make this offer to anyone else, any of the other men. There is an automatic fear, for her, in the proximity required to treat a wound like that. But this is Daryl, whose blood is still on her shirt, who held her hand in the back of the car because he knew, she guesses, that it was what she needed.

“Nah. ‘S fine, thanks.” He starts to move away, and she stands up from the kitchen stool on which she is sitting. There is a ripple of laughter from the living room where the others are eating, out of sight.

“It’ll take thirty seconds,” she says. “Between tonight and tomorrow morning that could get infected.”

He gives an impatient huff, and shrugs.

“Fine,” he says grumpily, and glances at her. “Thanks.”

She still has Hershel’s first aid kit in her bag from the farm—somehow, she hasn’t got around to returning it to him—and she fetches it from the room where she will sleep. When she gets back, Daryl is standing at the counter where she left him, head bowed, tracing the stitching on the sheath of her knife with one finger.

“Sit down and I’ll stand behind you,” she tells him. On the stool, he is low enough for her to see what she is doing, and she tugs the collar of his shirt down a little further, revealing the edge of a scar. He pulls away from her, and she breathes an apology at the same time as he does, his shoulders dropping as he straightens up.

He flinches when she cleans the cut, gooseflesh rippling across his skin. When she is ready to stitch, she leans forward a little, rests her hand on the round of his shoulder for a second.

“It’ll hurt but I only need to do three or four,” she says. He hums, a muscle in his jaw twitching, and she brings the sides of the wound together firmly.

He sits perfectly still as she stitches, as though feeling nothing at all, even when she pulls the thread to knot it at the end. She is oddly reluctant to finish the task and takes her time cutting a section of bandage to cover the stitching, listening to his even breaths, watching the minute rise and fall of his shoulders. As she lays the scissors down on the counter, he speaks.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiles, though he has his back to her. “I just need to put a bandage over it.”

“No, I mean—Andrea said you made them—when I was stuck in there, you—”

She flushes. “Rick would have gone back in anyway.”

“Still.” He clears his throat and drops his head. The skin right at his hairline is white, untouched by the sun, the back of his neck below it dull bronze.

“That reminds me, I wanted to make a hot compress for your leg.” She tapes the bandage down and steps back. “It must be sore and it’s looking pretty stiff.”

“Nah, ‘s fine.” He slides off the stool and turns to her. “Nice of you to, uh, think of it though.”

She glances at his wounded thigh, his crooked posture as he favours the bad leg.

“‘S fine,” he repeats, and walks around the stool, past her and towards the door. In the doorway, he pauses, and glances back at her. “Hope you sleep tonight.”

Her eyes sting, inexplicably, and she manages a wobbly smile. His face darkens with concern, and she turns to the medical kit.

“You too,” she says, busying herself with thread and scissors. Only when his heavy step is on the stairs does she think about the way he said it.Hope you sleep, as if he knows the hours she has spent restless the past few nights, as if he has heard her come awake crying from a nightmare, turning her face into the pillow so as not to wake Sophia.

She is adept at hiding herself from others—by becoming invisible, or by being exactly what they expect. She hides from Sophia and she used to hide from Ed, and she conceals what she feels unthinkingly now. But when she is near Daryl, it is like having a wound exposed to the elements, like having a scab peeled away before healing has taken place: the pressure of his gaze verging on painful, the blunt insistence of his empathy disrupting her equilibrium.Hope you sleep. She ignores the tears that drip onto the first aid kit as she closes it, and the tremor in her hands as she washes them, and by the time she goes out to the others, she is smiling, laughing at T-Dog’s jokes as she collects dirty plates, grateful that Daryl has disappeared again.

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

The bunker is significantly further away than Rick estimated, and it takes them nearly two hours to reach it the following morning. They leave the outlying suburbs of Savannah and head back into farmland, which becomes forest after a while, the trees breaking less frequently into fields. After a particularly long stretch of woodland, Rick slows down next to a small sign on a wooden stake, standing knee-height from the ground.Harry Norman Realtors, it reads, in white font on a brown background. Below the text, a man with thick dark hair and a winning smile gazes blankly at the travellers:Mark Dawson, his phone number beside his ear. Rick points to the sign as he passes, his arm thrust out the window, a finger waggling, and the others dutifully slow down behind him, trailing past as though paying their respects.

Beyond the sign, on the right-hand side of the road, there is an expanse of scrubby grass interrupted by a tall fence. Squinting through the truck window, Daryl can make out a small building behind the fence, positioned seemingly at random in the otherwise featureless stretch of turf. A short distance away, there is a radio mast, and a long, gleaming black structure which resolves into a set of huge solar panels as they get closer. Parked beside the building is a Lexus, black and dusty and expensive. On the opposite side of the road, the woods grow wild and undisturbed, thick kudzu carpeting the forest floor and advancing up tree trunks, occasional branches already heavy with the vine, their bark hidden entirely.

The vehicles pull over outside a pair of steel gates, the metal sheeting painted black. Tangled in a layer of barbed wire over the top are two walkers: youths, their pale skin burned and flaking in the sun, their legs thumping against the metal as they see the group. They are halfway over the top, twisting back at the sound of the cars, their sleeves and the flesh of their wrists caught in the wire. One of them has a tattoo on the side of his neck: a skull, diamonds lodged in the eye sockets. On the verge in front of the gate is another of the realtor’s signs, Mark Dawson’s grinning face welcoming them to their new home.

Cautiously, the group exits their vehicles. Sophia and Carl stay beside the open door of the Dodge, ready to duck inside if necessary. The girl is wearing her knife at her waist, and she strokes the sheath with one hand, looking down at it proudly. She thanked Daryl this morning, her smile bigger than he’d ever seen it, Carl glowering jealously in the background. Sophia looks up now and catches Daryl’s eye, but Rick speaks before he can acknowledge her.

“No sign that anyone’s in there, except the car.” The deputy nods at the two boys on the barbed wire. “My guess is they got electrocuted while the power grid was still up. The Lexus isn’t theirs unless they stole it.” He gazes down the length of electric fence, which ends where the forest begins again. “Wouldn’t be usin’ the solar panels for the electric fence. Drain ‘em too quickly.”

There is an air of excitement about Rick which Daryl cannot match. Carol has her eyes on the small, unprepossessing concrete building on the other side of the fence.We had a cellar down there. He had rope.She is standing with one hand resting against the side of her neck, her fingers toying with the ends of her hair. Daryl’s gaze settles on her wrist, so slender, the veins on the inside so close to the surface, and he tries to forget what she said, to erase the image of Ed tying her up.

“No way to know whether anyone’s actually in there until we go down,” Dale remarks. “For all we know it could be packed to the brim with the dead.”

“We haven’t seen another car for miles except that one,” Lori says. “If there are people down there, there aren’t many.”

Daryl gestures at the woods across the road. “Or they hid their cars. We ain’t checked further on. Could be a convoy of damn busses behind those trees.”

The deputy’s wife sniffs irritably, and Shane scowls at Daryl. Ignoring them, the hunter lifts his bow and fires a bolt through the head of one of the walkers on the fence, followed swiftly by a second to put down the other. There is a brief, startled silence as the moaning of the dead stops. Shane crosses to the gate and kicks the bottom lightly. The metal thrums.

“Ain’t gettin’ these open by hand if they were runnin’ on electricity,” he says.

“They must have a battery, surely, in a place like this. Prepper type back-up.” Dale walks to the fence and peers behind the gates. “But we’ll have to get in to figure it out anyway. Through the fence it is, I guess.”

“What do we know about the layout of this place?” Maggie, who says little these days except to Glenn and her father, sounds interested in something for the first time since the farm. “If we’re goin’ straight down into the dark we better know more or less what to expect.”

Rick goes to the Dodge and opens the glovebox, taking out the copy ofArchitectural Digesthe showed Carol. They crowd around the bonnet of the car as he spreads open the article, which includes a sketch of the bunker layout. There are eight flights of stairs leading down to the two-level residence, the uppermost level divided into bedrooms and bathrooms. Past the last bedroom is a control room housing the machinery needed to keep the bunker liveable. On the bottom level, there is a kitchen, a large storage space, a living room and a home movie theatre. According to the article, the place is plumbed from a storage tank that is fed by an aquifer.

“It can withstand a 20-kiloton nuclear explosion,” Rick says proudly. “Cold War level security, my friends.”

“That’s the least of our worries,” Andrea replies. “I just want water we haven’t had to fetch from a river.”

Hershel, Dale, and the women and children will stay topside, it is decided, while the others descend into the bunker to clear it. Daryl goes to get fence cutters from the RV while Rick, Glenn, T-Dog and Shane arm themselves, and he exits the Winnebago to find Carol waiting for him, half turned away as she watches Sophia. The woman looks no better rested than she did the previous day, her face paler than usual, her lips chapped. But her profile takes his breath away, the delicacy of her features, the slender strength of her neck. She is wearing a thin cardigan today in a dull brown colour, the edges frayed with age, and her arms are folded as though she is cold.

“Sorry.” She has turned back and caught him gazing at her. Faint colour appears in her cheeks. “I’m perpetually nervous about Sophia.” Her expression shifts to trepidation for a split second after the admission, long enough for him to know that Ed had no patience for her anxiety over their daughter.

“‘S normal,” Daryl says shortly. “‘Specially after she went missin’.”

She smiles at him gratefully. Like her daughter, she has her knife on her belt, the sheath lying snug against her thigh. Daryl forces his eyes back to her face.

“Somethin’ up?” he asks.

She hesitates, and then takes a deep breath.

“I’m worried about your leg.” Her brow furrows. “All those stairs. If you have to get out quickly, how will you—please don’t go down there.” The last words tumble over one another, and she hugs herself once she has spoken, keeping her eyes on his. When he doesn’t reply, she repeats the plea softly. “Please don’t go down there.”

He drops his gaze, unable to face the intensity of hers, and descends the steps of the RV, swinging his bad leg off the bottom one self-consciously. In front of her, he can see that her eyes are rimmed with pink, and he frowns as she ducks her head. Every time they speak, he is aware of how his natural reticence seems to prompt hers. With the others—with T-Dog, for instance—she seems more confident, more relaxed. With Daryl, there is a skittishness to her, a strain and a sadness of which there is no sign in the wider company. It is a reminder of his social ineptness, of how difficult his company is at the best of times.You’re a good listener, she told him. Maybe what she meant was merely that he reminds her of the worst parts of her life; draws them out like poison when she is with him.

“I’ll go in last,” he says, his voice rough and quiet so the others don’t overhear, don’t turn their intrusive gazes on the pair. “Which means I’ll get out first.”

“But your leg.” She wets her lips and swallows. “What if you fall? What if—yesterday, you—” Her throat works, and she looks off to the side, away from Sophia, back down the road they just drove.

“I gotta go in.” A surge of frustration makes him squeeze the wire cutters in his hand. “Otherwise I ain’t any use. See? This is all I got.” He slides his knife out the sheath, and she turns back to him at the sliver of sound it makes. “This an’ my crossbow. That’s what Iamto this group.”

“Not to me.” The speed with which she responds, the fervency of her reply, take him aback. He does notmindbeing a fighter, a hunter, a protector. It’s more than he was before all this, and he’s proud of it. He likes to think he does his job well, mostly. But Carol looks stricken, as though he has said something distressing. He squints at her in confusion.

“Like you said the other night,” he tells her. “Everyone does their part.”

“And if they don’t, or they can’t,” Her voice rises enough that he can sense some of the others glancing over at them. “Then what? They’re not worth keeping around?”

He would not have said it; he has not articulated so clearly to himself the reason for his need to be part of the group clearing the bunker. But when Carol speaks it aloud, he recognises the truth in it. What is he to these people other than a set of muscles? And anyone, he thinks, can become those. Anyone can learn the skills he brings to the group. He blinks, his next breath hurting as though she has struck him, and he doesn’t answer her.

Her expression softens, though her eyes are anxious. “What I mean is, no one thinks like that, Daryl. No one should.” She glances at the others, flushing slightly, before looking back at him. “You don’t have to risk your life just to prove you’re worth something.”

Anger flares in him, at last, at the conviction in her voice, and it is easier once he can glare at her, easier once he can focus on nothing but how wrong she is: not her ashen face, not the concern in her eyes, not the crooked scar on her collarbone where her husband broke it.

“That’s exactly what I gotta do,” he says flatly. “An’ if you think any different, you’re kiddin’ yourself.”

xxxx

The grass beneath the Lexus is dead: dry and brown, the green beginning around the wheels, where weeds and tiny white flowers have grown while the car has been parked here. One of the tyres is flat. In the vicinity of the building, the air is pungent with the smell of hot rubber.

The structure itself is squat and unattractive, a block with one-way windows, the glass silvered and the group’s reflections peering back at them. The door, to Carol’s surprise, is plain wood, but Dale tells her there are likely heavier metal doors inside, or at the bottom of the stairs. They are waiting, somewhat awkwardly, while Daryl retrieves his bolts and, with Glenn’s help, hauls down the bodies of the two boys on the barbed wire. Carl and Sophia are exploring the shade under the solar panels. The silence of this place makes Carol nervous.

Daryl doesn’t look at her as the men prepare to enter the building, the door crowbarred open. While Lori hugs Rick, murmuring in his ear, Shane watches, and Daryl stares at the ground, kicking a tuft of grass with the toe of one boot. Carol wants to turn away, to leave him to his stubborn, stupid choice. But she watches him limp into the building behind T-Dog, his body melting into the gloom, and she goes cold at the thought of what might await him.

“Water?” Andrea, who has been talking quietly to Dale, holds out a bottle, and Carol shakes her head, murmuringthanks. The blonde eyes her curiously. “He’ll be fine. He’s basically indestructible.”

“No he isn’t,” Carol retorts, and presses her lips together, trying to moderate her tone. “He isn’t. None of them are.”

Andrea sighs. “I just mean…he’s tough.”

Carol thinks of the marks on his chest and sides, the edge of the scar she saw as she stitched his neck yesterday. He didn’t seem tough at all to her then, despite the stillness with which he accepted the needle. She feels again the texture of his gooseflesh under her fingertips, hears the hitch in his breath as she tugged his collar down.

“She’s right, you know.” Dale has been listening. “Daryl’s not one you need to worry about. I mean look at Merle. Cut his own hand off and escaped that roof.”

“He’s notMerle.” She cannot keep the irritation from her voice. “He takes risks for other people and forgets about himself. Like you said yesterday, Andrea, he won’t leave anyone behind.” Carol glances back at Sophia. “He treats injuries like inconveniences and nothing more.”

“Sounds like someone else we know,” Andrea says dryly, and Dale elbows her. “What? It’s true.”

“What is?” Carol is straining to hear any sound at all from the building or below. There is none.

“You’re the same as him. Or you were, when Ed was around.” Andrea looks uncomfortable. “You had, uh, you had injuries that would have put me in bed for three days, and you just…carried on.”

Dimly, as though groping through a thick mist at a shape both familiar and incomprehensible, Carol begins to understand something about Daryl. His persistent belief that he must keep going. Keepcontributing, make himself indispensable to the people around him.

“I wasn’t allowed to rest,” she says quietly. Andrea shuffles her feet and looks embarrassed, but Carol is feeling her way to a realisation that has nothing to do with herself, and so she keeps talking, thinking of Daryl. “Ed would—it would make him angry if I did. But also, he—” She swallows thickly. “He wanted me to be weak. He wanted me to fail.” She stares at the blonde until Andrea meets her eyes. “And I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. Wouldn’t give him the excuse to do worse.”

There is still discomfort in Andrea’s face, but there is a grudging respect now, too, and she nods once, slowly. Carol looks at the bunker entrance, and thinks of the mocking way Merle used to order Daryl around camp, calling himDarylina, and the quickness with which the younger man obeyed his brother, the foul-mouthed bluster he affected when Merle was nearby. And under it all, she sees now, was the boy he must once have been, trying to prove to his father that he didn’t deserve to be beaten.

“They should be inside by now,” says Dale, pulling her out of her contemplation. She feels immediately foolish. What does she know, really, of Daryl’s childhood, of the way his mind works? She is projecting her own experience onto him, doubtless because of her loneliness.Pathetic, she thinks. Butterflies flit above the long grass against the side of the building, and under the solar panels, Carl laughs.

xxxx

His hip is burning from swinging his leg down each step by the time they reach the bottom of the eighth flight, his teeth gritted as his feet finally hit level ground. They have descended through darkness into deeper darkness, the air getting cooler and staler the further they go, and the small stairwell in which they now stand smells of damp concrete and earth. The walls are thick, several feet, Shane estimates, and as they got further from the entrance, their steps stopping echoing, the sound swallowed by the strange, dense atmosphere.

Rick shines his flashlight in front of him, onto a large steel door, the handle a spindle like those on submarine hatches. They have no way of breaking through materials of this strength, and Shane mutters an oath. But Rick steps closer and angles the flashlight towards the edge of the door. It is ajar, by just the smallest crack.

The deputy looks back at the group and adjusts his grip on the Colt in his hand. They nod at him, one by one, and he takes hold of the spindle, Shane helping him to pull the door slowly open.

The child who stumbles out is younger than Sophia, younger than Carl, and silent, so that for a brief moment Daryl thinks he is alive. His hair is light brown and tousled, as though he has just woken from a nap, his reaching hands bone thin. The other men step back instinctively, but Daryl crouches to meet the boy, filled with pity, with a sadness that feels decades old. And so Daryl is the first to see the child’s face, the yellow eyes and sunken cheeks, the small gap-toothed grimace as a husky growl meets him.

The boy’s head almost fits into his hand as he sinks the knife into the walker’s temple. He cradles the dusty cheek, looks into the filmy eyes as a small trickle of blood wets his blade. The back of one of the boy’s arms, he notices as the body slides to the floor, is missing a chunk of flesh.

“He was right at the door.” Rick sounds shaken. “Like he’d—like he’d—”

“Tried to push it open,” finishes Glenn.

“Parents must be in there.” Shane clicks the safety off his gun and steps over the tiny body. “Watch yourselves.”

What lies on the other side of the door is incongruously welcoming, despite it being revealed gradually by the beams of their flashlights. A rich Persian rug carpets the floor of the entrance hall, the walls lined with lantern-style light fittings. There are doors on both sides, and the hallway opens into a larger room containing a central table, some couches, and two desks against one wall, a coffee station against the opposite wall. On the right, a staircase leads down to the lower level—the kitchen, Daryl remembers.

“Business hub,” Rick whispers, gesturing with his light at the desks. “The magazine mentioned it.”

Daryl snorts, and limps to a door opening left, turning the handle softly. Beyond it is another hallway, lined with more doors: bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. At the far end of the hallway is the room containing the controls for ventilation, plumbing, and electricity.

The group splits up to check the bedrooms, all of which but one are empty, their luxurious furnishings pristine. The room adjacent to the control room stands open, and though there is no one inside, it has clearly been lived in. Clothes hang in the closet—a man’s and a woman’s, the shelves holding smaller folded garments—the bed is wrinkled, and there is a laptop on the dresser, a stack of books on the nightstand. The bathroom has two bags of toiletries on the vanity, and the bottom of the bathtub is littered with toys, a family of yellow rubber ducks, a LEGO ship, an inflatable waterproof picture book.

“Four toothbrushes,” T-Dog says grimly. “Two of ‘em for kids.”

The control room is empty, bound manuals on a counter, blank screens along the wall, a cupboard of repair equipment and spare parts at the back. They leave it and head for the lower level, silent with tension.

They find the rest of the family in the kitchen, into which a curved staircase leads. The tiled floor is sticky under their feet, the sound of their boot soles like crinkling plastic on the tacky patch for a moment, before it is drowned out by snarling. A tall figure lurches out of the gloom, and Daryl takes it down with a bolt before Rick can fire his gun. A softer, snappier growl follows it, the second figure smaller, tripping over a fallen chair as it stumbles for the men. Glenn fells it with a machete. They should be relieved, both of the adults they figured were here put down. But their flashlights find the last inhabitant, in a plush pink onesie, her arms waving at them as the straps of her highchair strain against her chest. She must be two, Daryl estimates, or almost two, her blonde hair straight and fine, her skin unbroken by bite or scratch. She tilts her head and curls her upper lip, and Daryl closes his eyes as T-Dog slides a knife into her skull.

There is no one else in the bunker. The kitchen shares a wall with the home movie theatre, rows of leather seats and pretentious velvet curtains open on either side of a screen, and beyond that there is a living room, sprawling and comfortable, divided into sections by a pool table and a table tennis table, couches and armchairs clustered in groups. At the far end, behind another door, is the storeroom, and Shane lets out a cheer as he opens it. The shelves are full, toiletries and medical supplies arranged neatly alongside household goods, nonperishable foods and beverages taking up two-thirds of the shelf space. Rick was right, Daryl thinks, and he claps the deputy on the shoulder as they make their way back towards the kitchen. They were smart to come here.

They stop to take the bodies out with them, and as Daryl unclips the toddler, her expression softened in death back to something human, Glenn hoists the man up by the armpits, the corpse’s face caught in Daryl’s flashlight for a second. Glossy dark hair, expensive teeth, clothes that cost more money than Daryl has ever had in his possession at one time. It is Mark Dawson, the realtor for this property, who grinned at them from the sign as they arrived.

“Must’ve brought his family here at the turn.” Rick, bending over the woman’s body, has also recognised Dawson. “Makes sense. He would’ve had keys.”

Daryl lifts the toddler from her highchair. She smells of death and baby shampoo, and she weighs almost nothing in his arms. He steps back and a piece of pottery crunches under his boot, a broken cereal bowl, the milk a sticky patch across the floor. Suddenly, he wants only to be on the surface, breathing clean air, looking up at the sky.

“Dale gonna be able to get the lights and fans workin’? Sort out the water?” he asks Rick. From the magazine, he understands that there is a filtration system for the water that needs solar power to run, and fans to keep the air breathable for long periods. The deputy nods eagerly.

“I don’t doubt it. Hopefully by tonight so we don’t have to camp up top.” He starts dragging the woman’s corpse towards the stairs. “We can drive these bodies a short way away an’ burn ‘em. Keep this place inconspicuous.”

Daryl grunts, letting the others ascend first with their heavier burdens. He carries the toddler in the crook of one arm, mindful that he will have to lift her brother too on the way out. As he climbs, he thinks, inexplicably, of Carol’s face when he brought Sophia back to the farm, the sound of her voice as she called the girl’s name. He doesn’t want her to see these little ones; doesn’t want her to look at him in that wide-eyed, tearful way she has that makes him furious with himself and with this world, with the hurt it causes and his failure—again and again—to shield her from it.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

“Your momma know you’re up here?”

The girl steps out of the shadowy interior of the entrance building, in a bulky sweatshirt, which he recognises as Carol’s, and thin cotton pyjama pants that end above her ankles. Her feet are bare, her face blurred by midnight, but her eyes are like two silver coins, gathering the meagre light and shining at him through the gloom.

“She sent me to sleep with the Grimeses.”

“Well, they ain’t up here.” He gestures at the open ground around them, the hulking gleam of the solar panels, with the hand holding his cigarette. “Why’d she send you?”

In the second before she responds, his stomach churns at the thought that perhaps it is like the days before Ed died. Perhaps Carol is spending time with someone (T-Dog) and wanted privacy. Sophia shrugs, her eyes sliding from his, her mouth a thin line. It does nothing to ease his disquiet. He exhales loudly through his nose and scowls at the kid.

“Where’s your knife?”

She touches her palm to the place where the knife hung all day today at her waist. “Next to the bed with Mama’s.”

He shakes his head and goes over to the doorway where she stands.

“Gotta have it on you all the time,” he tells her, and takes a drag, exhaling to one side. She peers up at him anxiously.

“Sorry,” she says softly. The excitement he saw in her as they moved into the bunker today is gone; in its place is an uneasiness that prods at his own peace of mind. He volunteered for first watch, because a few hours helping Dale get the fans running was more than enough time underground for one day. And since he came up top, he’s been enjoying the quiet, the proximity of the woods, the clear sky and its stars. He’s been trying not to think about Carol, and mostly succeeding. Until the girl appeared.

There was enough to do that he hardly saw Carol during the move into the bunker. She stayed aboveground, unpacking the cars, for a long time. Daryl was roped in to help Dale, who needed brute strength for some of the work he had to do reconnecting the solar panels, and getting the air and water filtration systems working. The bunker hums now, faintly, with the fans set into the walls and shafts, and the pump that filters water from the storage tank. But they have made it liveable: lit, plumbed, temperature controlled, and adequately ventilated.

No one had the energy to celebrate tonight, but there was much laughter as people retired to their rooms, a lightness of mood Daryl hadn’t felt among them since their first night at the CDC. He glimpsed Carol on her way to bed with Sophia, head bowed as she listened to the girl talk. She didn’t notice him, or she ignored him, he doesn’t know which. But she seemed to be managing being underground, judging by the dinner he found in the kitchen, and by the neatness of the shelves on which she’d arranged their food supplies.

“Don’ be sorry,” he says to Sophia now. “Remember it next time.”

She nods, her gaze dropping, and he realises how late it is. Remembers that kids like her, with moms who notice sh*t like that, are usually asleep at this hour. He is about to send her back downstairs when she speaks.

“Can I keep watch with you for a bit?” The words sound like they take effort, her voice sticking on the final syllables. “Please?”

He looks down at her, her hair flattened on one side, the other side brushed soft and shiny, and she gazes back, unblinking, hopeful.

“Shouldn’ be up here when your momma thinks you’re with Rick an’ Lori.”

“She won’t mind.” The girl’s face sets into a stubborn expression. “I’ve sat with you before while you kept watch.”

The air between them shivers with memories, with the endless wait for Ed to be finished with his wife, with the knowledge of what he was doing. Sophia bites her lip, and Daryl takes a long drag on his cigarette, closing his eyes briefly.

“Fine.” He hitches his crossbow higher on his shoulder, and scowls at her. “Nearly done here anyway. Glenn should take over soon.”

She relaxes, one corner of her mouth twitching upwards, and he jerks his head towards the fence.

“‘Bout to do another perimeter check. C’mon.”

He stomps off ahead of her, but he is attuned to her presence behind him, the brush of her bare feet in the grass. The property appears safe; neither walkers nor people have disrupted his hours on watch. But he was alone, and well armed. He is more alert with the kid to protect than he has been all night.

She falls into step with him as he reaches the fence, arms hanging at her sides, hands lost in the sleeves of the sweatshirt. There is nothing childlike about her beyond her appearance. A heaviness rests on her, a desolation that reminds him of Carol. He wonders whether she was always like this, back in that flooded basem*nt and even before it; maybe he just didn’t bother to notice it until recently. He wants to cheer her up, but he doesn’t know how to. All their shared points of reference are moments, history, he’d rather forget.

They reach the corner of the fence and turn along the front edge of the property, heading for the gate. Taking a last quick drag, he flicks his cigarette butt between the wires.

“Do you think we could make a garden?” Her voice is hushed, as though she is afraid to break the silence.

He shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe. Plenty of space for it.”

“Mama likes to grow things.” He feels her eyes on him, and glances down at her. Her expression is earnest.

“How ‘bout you?” he asks. “You like it too?”

She hesitates, crinkling her nose. “I don’t like the worms.”

He gives a snort of laughter, and she looks at first startled and then pleased, as though amusing him is an achievement.

“You ever tasted a worm?” he says as they walk past the gate, and she stops in her tracks, making a disgusted face.

“No.” She trots to catch up with him again. “Haveyou?”

“Uh huh. Taste kinda bitter. Gotta choose between bitin’ ‘em an’ havin’ to taste ‘em, or swallowin’ ‘em whole.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Alive.”

“Eeeuw!” she squeals, but there is enjoyment in her horror, and he is relieved by it, by having coaxed out the child in her. They trudge on, turning the corner and walking towards the solar panels at the far end. In the woods bordering the fence, the night is darker, the air cooler, and Daryl can smell the trees, the damp dirt.

“Why’d you eat a worm?” She glances at him, but he keeps his eyes on the ground. He’d been lost in the woods for three days before he’d tried a worm, plucking it out the loam in fascinated daze of hunger, staring at it as it writhed between his fingers. He was eight, and Merle wasn’t around, and his father, he found out when he made it home days later, didn’t even know he was missing.Thought you was playin’, the stink of alcohol, bloodshot eyes peering at him as he searched the kitchen frantically for food. He considers lying to the girl, but finds he can’t.

“Got lost as a kid. Was hungry,” he says shortly. “Ate a bunch of ‘em.”

She is silent for a moment, watching him, and he looks towards the forest, ignoring the gentle pressure of her gaze.

“Who found you?”

He looks at her, then, his face hard.

“No one. Got myself home.”

She nods, and he is ashamed that she knows enough about his childhood to be unsurprised by his reply.

“Merle wasn’ around then,” he says defensively. “An’ my momma was dead.”

Her eyes widen, and he thinks of Carol, so attuned to the suffering of others, so dismissive of her own.

“I’m sorry your mama died,” Sophia says quietly. They have stopped beside the solar panels. It has taken him just minutes to burden her with a fresh reason for misery. He sighs.

“Was a long time ago.” The door of the entrance block opens, and Glenn appears, rubbing his face. “Come. My shift’s over an’ you should be asleep.”

Glenn stares at them, puzzled, as they approach, but Daryl feels no obligation to explain why the girl is with him, and merely grunts and nods as they pass the other man. Sophia’s pace slows as they start down the stairs. At first, he thinks it’s because of his leg. But then she falls behind him, lagging on the landings, until he stops on the fifth flight and turns around.

“What’s the hold-up?”

She rubs one toe in the dust and avoids his eyes.

“Nothing.”

Despite the ache in his thigh, he ascends the steps he has just walked down, until he is eye level with the girl. In the dim radiance of the black steel sconces, her face is drawn.

“Soph.” He is struggling for the right question, but at her name she flushes and shifts on her feet, one hand holding the metal railing.

“I want to sleep with the Grimeses,” she whispers. He frowns.

“‘’S fine. Your momma sent you there.” He shakes his head. “So you can sleep with them.”

She says nothing, but her demeanour doesn’t change, and he swallows a sigh. He is tired. It must be nearing 1am, and he doesn’t know how to get the girl to spit out whatever the problem is. He rubs one of his eyes with the heel of his hand, steeling himself, and asks the question he was too afraid to ask earlier.

“Why’d she send you to Lori and Rick anyway?” His reluctance is clear in his voice, and it makes the kid more nervous. She releases the railing and holds the hem of her sweatshirt with both hands. In the silence that follows his question, edged with the quiet hum of the fans below them, she searches his face, studying him as though assessing his reliability.Trying to trust you. He doesn’t look away, though the intensity of her gaze is difficult to endure. At last, she speaks.

“She kept waking me up. She—she scared me.”

“The hell you mean?”

She recoils from the question, from the scowl on his face, but she answers, stammering as though anxious that he will be mad at her.

“She—she—she has bad dreams.” The girl’s voice rises in pitch. “She says—things and makes—makes sounds and sometimes she wakes me up.” There is, for an instant, genuine fear in her eyes, the blue darkening as she lowers her eyes to his chest. “I don’t like it.”

He forgets the child, staring unseeing at her as he rocks back on his feet, his mind three flights down, with Carol. Carol who looks wearier every day no matter where they sleep, who is so determined to pretend nothing is wrong, who spends her daylight hours worrying about his leg instead of herself. Sophia sniffles, and he blinks at her.

“Don’t tell her I told you,” she says urgently. “Please, Daryl. It’s—private.”

He reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it gently, and she turns her head as though about to press her face to his knuckles. He lets her go quickly, still shellshocked from hugging her the other night, not willing to do it again so soon.

“I won’t,” he tells her roughly. “‘Kay?” He swallows, finally grasping the issue. “You worried ‘bout her on her own while you’re with Rick an’ Lori?”

The girl nods, her chin trembling.

“My room’s right next door. Can check on her when I go to bed. If she’s awake. All right?” He is impatient. All he plans to do is stand outside Carol’s door for a moment, but he wants to get therenow, to hear for himself that she is peacefully asleep and know he has dispensed with his promise to the girl. Some of the tension leaves Sophia’s body, and she nods again, eagerly.

“Thanks, Daryl.”

Again, he is afraid she will embrace him, and he turns away abruptly and starts down the stairs. After a pause, she follows, her steps a soft, steady counterpoint to his uneven gait.

xxxx

It seems irresponsible boiling the kettle just for herself. Dale says the solar batteries are huge, big enough to hold power for a few sunless days at a time in winter. Still, she feels selfish as she switches it on, and decides that in future she will fill a thermos before bed, when everyone else is having hot drinks too.

She woke from her last nightmare alone, clawing at the comforter, her chest tight as she begged a dead man to untie her and let her out of the stifling dark. It took her longer to come to herself without Sophia shaking her, without the child’s tearful voice dragging her back into their bedroom. But it is better that way. Whatever she says in her nightmares leaves her daughter weepy and frightened and is likely giving her bad dreams of her own. Tomorrow, Carol will ask Lori whether Sophia can stay with them more regularly. Just for a time. Just until she gets this under control.

“Hey.”

She turns from the counter, tense with fright. Daryl is at the foot of the stairs, crossbow in one hand. He has been on watch, and his face is lined with weariness. His eyes flick to her chest, and he colours, looking quickly away as he clears his throat. She is wearing actual pyjamas for the first time in forever, old cotton pants that are too big for her now, and a stretched, faded tank top that is too loose, too revealing, her nipples stiff with adrenalin against the thin fabric.

“Oh God, sorry,” she says. She did not bring a cardigan downstairs with her. Her chest is still damp with the sweat of her nightmare, the undersides of her breasts sticky. “I didn’t think—I wasn’t expecting anyone would be here.”

He grunts, shrugs, and meets her eyes again, his cheeks crimson.

“Jus’ finished watch.”

She nods, and turns back to the counter, fiddling with a tin of teabags, listening to him cross the tiles and lay his bow on the wooden table in the centre of the room.

“I found some chamomile tea,” she says with an effort at brightness. “Would you like some? It’s good for sleeping.”

“Thanks.”

She wasn’t expecting him to say yes. Glancing over her shoulder, she watches him perch on the edge of the table, his boots swinging, one hand scratching at a callus on the palm of the other. He looks back at her expressionlessly. The kitchen is lit by undercounter lights, and the shadows congregate in the middle of the room, finding the angles in his face and body.

“How come you’re up?” There is a note of purpose in his voice that discomfits her, as though he already knows the answer and wants her to say it. She shrugs, breaking their eye contact and turning back to the tea.

“I don’t sleep well, as a rule,” she replies. “Never have.”

The side of his boot thumps against a table leg, and she jumps, the lid of the tea tin rattling.

“‘Me neither.”

The kettle clicks off, the murmur of the water fading. Dropping teabags into two heavy pottery mugs, she fills them with water. The scent of chamomile rises, floral and sweet, making her aware of the musk of Daryl’s tobacco.

“Well, hopefully this will help us both,” she says briskly, stirring the tea with her back to him. She is cooling down, and realises, suddenly, that the tank top reveals the upper part of her back, the site of some of her worst scars. She turns, mortified, folding her arms across her chest. He is still watching her, his expression unreadable, but his ears are red.

“I’m sorry,” she says bleakly. “Truly. You don’t want to—I’ll get a cardigan.”

She starts for the stairs, and in an instant, he has slid off the table and is at her side, his hand holding her forearm for the briefest moment to stop her leaving. His fingers are warm and dry.

“Ain’t a thing,” he says, his voice low, the words scraping lightly across her skin. “But I ain’t here to disturb you. I’ll go.”

“No.” She doesn’t want that, she realises. She wants, just for a while, to feel safe. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll stay if you will.” There is a glimmer of humour in his eyes, a softness to his mouth that doesn’t quite become a smile. She ducks her head, and he steps back, allowing her to return to the counter. A chair squeaks on the floor as she fishes the teabags out the mugs, the back of her neck prickling as she tries to remember which scars are likely visible to him right now. But he is staring at the tabletop when she brings the tea over, picking at a groove in the wood. He mumbles his thanks as she sets down his mug, and she takes the chair next to him. This way, he will have to look at her less.

The tea is too hot to drink straight away. Daryl digs a fingernail into the grain of the wood and then runs his fingertip along the line, with a concentration that raises gooseflesh on her back. She shivers, and he shrugs off his leather vest without a word, holding it out to her.

“Ain’t much but it’s somethin’,” he mutters. She should refuse, but she is too tired, too wrung out, to pretend she doesn’t want to cover what she can of herself.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, and slides the vest on. The leather is as warm as his skin, and she is enveloped in the scent of him, in a satiny smooth heat so comforting that she nestles into the garment without thinking, pulling the sides together over her chest. Daryl leans back in his seat, his legs extended beneath the table, his feet crossed at the ankles.

“Is it cold up top?” she asks. He shakes his head.

“Nah. Not really.” He picks up his mug and watches the steam rise from it. “Won’t be long before it is though. We got here at the right time.”

“Yeah.” She looks around at the kitchen, grander and better equipped than any in which she has ever cooked. “There’s something almost ridiculous about this place. You know?” She meets his eyes. “Such luxury in a—in a—”Tomb, she thinks, but doesn’t say it. Her chest hurts with a memory of panic, and she crosses her arms, the leather rustling against her skin.

“How’re you findin’ bein’ down here?” He gazes at her unwaveringly, and she wishes she had never told him about the cellar. The rope.

“Fine.” The lie sticks in her throat, the single syllable hoarse. A muscle twitches in Daryl’s jaw, and she looks away from him, taking a sip of tea. The temperature is bearable, but not comfortable, and her throat is burnt smooth by it. She thinks of the click of Ed’s lighter and feels sick.

“You ever not fine?” The question is mild, but he leans forward as he asks it, his feet flat on the floor and one leg jiggling restlessly as he puts the mug back on the table. With his forefinger, he breaks the ribbon of steam rising from it, and watches it weave itself back together.

“Of course,” she says. “You’ve—you’ve seen me when I’m not fine.” The blanket between them, his hand on the bare skin of her back. The recollection is a physical one, pain flaring in her shoulder, her sides, her face. She pushes it away by asking him sharply, “What about you?”

He tilts his head, as if acknowledging that she has struck a fair blow. There is no anger in his face, certainly not the panicked fury she feels at being cornered in this way, and she resents him for that.

“Same applies,” he says, and she frowns. His gaze shifts back to the table. “You’ve seen me when I ain’t fine.”

“I don’t mean when you’ve been shot in the leg, Daryl,” she says coldly.

“Neither do I.” The words are slow. He lifts the mug and takes a sip, the base of it scuffing the surface of the table as he sets it down. His fingers are shaking. Astonished, she stares at him. “That night he—Ed, that night, what he did.” He stops, looking at her suddenly, and she feels something crumble inside her, cracks giving way as she hugs her arms against her belly. “I wasn’ fine either. Not then, not now when I think of it.”

She shakes her head fiercely, because he is breaking their agreement by bringing it up. But her eyes are filling with tears and she can’t speak, though the things she needs to say echo through her head.He tied me to the radiator. He gagged me when I screamed. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t—sleep,” she gasps instead, and lifts a hand to swipe at her face. “I can’t sleep. That’s all.”

He nods, his expression agonised, and he turns in his chair to face her properly. She leans away from him, trying to collect herself, wiping the tears as they spill over her cheeks.

“What’s keepin’ you awake?” he asks, with a tenderness that is painful to her.

“Just dreams.” Her breath hiccups.

“Bad ones?”

She nods. He is so close to her, his voice and body nearer than she can safely manage them, her composure out of reach.

“You can say whatever you want. Remember?” He repeats the words he said to her on the steps of the house where Ed died, speaking slowly and carefully. She shakes her head.He burnt me. She shakes her head again, harder, and a sob rises in her throat.

“Okay.” Daryl sits back. His voice is dull, exhausted, his hands still shaking as he lifts the mug in front of him. She has pushed him past his limit and refused to meet him there. But as he moves out of her space, she starts to calm, finds she can control her breathing better.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She is apologising for so many things, contradictory things, that she doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Daryl.”

She stands up, almost tipping her chair backwards, and he catches it with one hand as he gets to his feet. The warmth of his body is gone from the vest, and it hangs to her thighs, heavier than she imagined it would be. He stares at it for a moment, his face pulling into an expression she can’t decipher, and then he drops his gaze to the floor between them.

“I ain’t had many friends.” His teeth worry the dry skin on his lower lip. “Ain’t much good at this.” He looks at her. “You ain’t gotta be sorry about anythin’.”

“Friendship isn’t meant to be like this.” She takes a deep, ragged breath, and fresh tears wet her lashes as she laughs. “Every conversation ending in—in some dumb drama.”

“It ain’t dumb,” he says savagely, and she flinches. “Cut yourself some goddamn slack. Just ‘cause he’s dead doesn’t mean—doesn’t mean he ain’t still in there.”

He lifts a hand and touches her temple with his fingertips. Either she has anticipated the movement or his hand lingers, because when she turns her face into it, it is right there waiting, his fingers smelling of cigarettes, his thumb grazing her brow as she hides against his skin. It is an odd gesture, but he does not move away. Instead, he steps forward, sliding his hand around to her cheek and then the back of her head, guiding her face to his shoulder so she can hide there instead. She gives a small sob as his arms encircle her, days of tension draining from her as she sags against him, and she tucks her hands between her chest and his, her palms flat. After a moment, he tightens his hold, his heart thudding against her face. It is such a strange feeling, being held so firmly and yet being unafraid, and she is dizzy for a second, her knees buckling as her lack of sleep catches up with her. But he has her, and does not loosen his hold.

“Come.” He says the word against the crown of her head, and stops for a long moment, his breath stuttering, a tremor in his arms. She waits for him to find the courage to continue. “I’ll sit with you. Whatever you—whatever you need. ‘Kay? I’ll stay with you while you go to sleep.” He sighs. “You gotta sleep.” His lips move against her hair silently, and she nods against his chest.Weak, she thinks immediately, and stiffens, pulling away from him.And selfish.He gives you an inch and you take a mile.Tries to be your friend and you make him your crutch. Daryl releases her.

“Stop.” He looks down at her, his eyes dark and anguished, and repeats the word in a whisper. “Stop, Carol.”

Pushin’ me right to my limit, Carol. I warned you.

She shakes her head helplessly, covering her mouth with one hand. Carefully, as though anticipating that she will resist, Daryl puts his arm around her shoulders, urging her towards the stairs. The side of his body is all bone and muscle, the smell of his sweat sharp, and the rhythm of his limp rocks her as they climb, the rasp of his breath muddling Ed’s voice in her ears.

Chapter 19

Chapter Text

Carol has somehow managed to make the Peletiers’ room feel homely in just the few hours they have been inside the bunker. There are two beds, a king-size and a single, but only the former has been slept in, the sheets and comforter tangled together. Amid the pale blue, expensive linen, Daryl spots the blankets mother and daughter have used since the farm. On the nightstand is Sophia’s lucky cat, the two knives, and a thin gold chain and crucifix Carol used to wear. She took it off, he thinks, while he was searching for her daughter.

The faucet stops running, and he turns back to the bathroom door, behind which Carol has been since they got back to her room. The other bedrooms are silent, the hallway dark, but there is a lamp on next to Carol’s bed. The room smells like her, citrus and sweetness.

The hair around her face is damp when she comes out of the bathroom. She is still wearing his vest, and the sight of it—her bare arms against the leather, the swell of her breasts beneath it—has had him half-aroused since she put it on. He is caught between his concern for her and a desire as base, as animal, as he felt that morning by the river. He wants to hold her like a child until she is asleep. And he wants to bend her over the back of the armchair andf*ckher, grip the leather in his fist and hear her—

She hesitates beside the bed, twisting her hands in front of her, and he is wretched with guilt, suddenly, with the knowledge that he does not deserve her friendship or her trust. When he walked into the kitchen and she turned to him, her chest gleaming with perspiration, her breasts soft and loose under worn cotton, he wanted to turn around and leave again. For her sake, not his own.

“You know, I’ll be fine.” She wets her lips, staring on the floor. “You don’t have to stay, Daryl, I’ll—”

He walks to the bed as she trails off, and he straightens the comforter, folds it back and yanks the sheets smooth.

“You want me to take that?” He gestures at the vest, ignoring her words. She doesn’t reply immediately, her face tight with anxiety as she looks up, and he softens his tone. “Or you wanna—you still need it?”

She nods, her eyes awash with tears again, and he looks away.

“For w-warmth,” she whispers, though she is about to climb into a bed piled with covers, though she is in a room containing much warmer, more comfortable clothing.

“Go on then,” he says gruffly, and crosses the room to the armchair in the corner. “Be right here.”

The chair is comfortable, generous, upholstered in navy blue corduroy, and he sinks into it with a sigh. Carol watches him from where she stands, but when he is seated, settled deep into the cushions, she climbs onto the mattress and lies down, pulling her legs up to her chest, tugging the comforter to her waist. She keeps her gaze on him, and once her head is on the pillow he can see she is fighting sleep, her eyes heavy but fixed on him. His heart clenches.

“Ain’t gonna leave,” he says, making the decision only as he speaks it. “Even once you’re asleep. Be right here.”

She closes her eyes, her mouth trembling.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and his eyes sting. She holds the edges of the vest in her hands, tucking them against her chest. Her pale fingers on the black leather are what makes him look away from her in the end, lust stirring in him, his hands gripping the arms of the chair as he stares instead at the ceiling. He doesn’t shut his eyes until he knows she’s asleep, her breathing steady and slow.

He wakes with difficulty, tired from watch and from a day of work. The sound that rouses him makes its way into his dreams, tries to fit itself there so he does not have to wake at all. But it is wrong, chilling, a strangled wheezing that makes him gasp for air as he comes to, as though it is he who cannot breathe. He starts forward in his seat, squinting in the lamplight, and then remembers where he is, and with whom, and stands up, stumbling towards the other end of the room.

Carol is facing the wall, the comforter kicked to the bottom of the bed, her hands scrabbling feebly against the plaster as she fights for air. He says her name twice before he reaches the bed, but it makes no difference. Her neck is arched, her feet pushing at the snarl of sheets, his vest sliding off her side so the curve of her hip and the angle of her waist are revealed. Daryl clambers onto the mattress, crawling to her. Beneath his palms, the bedclothes are hot and damp. The sliver of bare skin above her pants shines with sweat.

He says her name again, but his voice is too soft at this proximity to the scrape and whistle of her breathing, his mouth dry with panic. At a loss, desperate to rouse her, he lays a hand on her shoulder. She freezes, still wheezing, and then cowers from his touch, her fingertips white as she tears at the wall. He is cold with horror at whatever memory she is enduring, speechless with the violence of it. But then she turns her head towards him, her cheeks hollowing out with every breath, her eyes unseeing and filled with dread, and he finds his voice.

“Breathe. You’re okay. You’re okay.Breathe, Carol.”

He bends closer to her face as he speaks, waiting for her to see him, not knowing how to pull her out of the nightmare. He closes the gap she opened between his hand and her shoulder and squeezes lightly, repeating her name. Her face crumples.

“Please please,” she croaks, her fingers frantic against the wall. “Don’t.”

Helpless, he withdraws his hand, covering his face for a second as he gathers himself, rocking forward as he starts to speak.

“He ain’t here.” The thought of being mistaken for Ed makes him sick with fury at the dead man. “Ed ain’t here, Carol. Just me an’ you. No one’s gonna—” His throat spasms. “No one’s gonna hurt you.”

The moment she comes fully awake is almost worse than what precedes it. Recognition replaces the fear in her eyes, and then a shame so acute that he is grateful when she turns her face back to the wall, when he doesn’t have to see how much she hates him seeing her like this. Her trembling fades gradually, and she begins to breathe slowly and deliberately, her forehead against the plaster, her eyes closed. He kneels at her back, watching her hands go limp as she calms, his heart straining at the limits of his chest.

“Thank you.” She does not open her eyes or turn towards him. Her throat sounds inflamed. “I’m real sorry.”

“‘S fine. ‘S why I’m here.” His voice is as hoarse as hers, as though he, too, has been fighting for breath. “Right?”

She doesn’t reply. Her pyjama pants are rucked up to her knees, and her calves are lean and muscular, her ankles delicate. He looks away from her feet, the high arches and blue-veined skin, and moves to the edge of the mattress, shifting his legs off the bed to stand up.

“Your father,” she says suddenly. He tenses. “Is he…still alive?”

Daryl swallows, his throat aching. “Nah.”

She doesn’t offer condolences. He is grateful for that. The bedclothes rustle, and he glances behind him. She is turning from the wall, stiffly, as though her muscles are sore, and she keeps her arms and legs bent against her body, keeps herself small as she peers at him.

“Will you talk to me for a while?” she asks, her voice empty of feeling. He winces, and she closes her eyes. “Not about your father, just…about anything.”

It is a more difficult request than she realises. He is not like Dale—not a conversationalist, not well educated, not really interesting at all. But he grunts, and turns his body a little, so he is facing the top of the bed.

“You can lie down,” she tells him softly, and opens her eyes with effort. “It’s a huge bed, and I won’t—I won’t—”

He stares at her, giving a disbelieving snort. Confusion crosses her face, and he flushes. Her eyes look damp. Suppressing a sigh, he lies down awkwardly on the edge of the bed, facing her across a rumpled expanse of sheet. The sharp smell of fear, of sweat, infuses the linen. Opposite him, Carol has the cramped, scrawny look of a hatchling, eyes too big for her face and filled with a hunger which surely cannot be for his conversation.

“What do you want me to talk about?” he asks, frowning to hide his nerves.

“Anything,” she whispers, and hesitates. “Anything that doesn’t make you sad.”

xxxx

She wakes up once more before morning, whimpering in fear. Daryl is saying her name, and she reaches across the bed towards his voice, her eyes refusing to open, Ed’s face inches from hers. Daryl’s hand closes on her fingers and the mattress dips as he moves closer.

“You’re okay,” he rasps, his voice thick with sleep. She tries to believe him. He places her hand on his sternum and flattens his palm over her knuckles, so she can feel him breathing, sense his heartbeat beneath her thumb. He is hot and solid, his hand covering hers firmly. “You’re okay.”

She slips back into sleep so quickly that when she wakes for the day, her recollection of the moment has the quality of a dream. But though there is a foot of space between her and Daryl now, their hands still lie touching on the sheets, his fingertips resting on the back of her wrist, twitching every few seconds in his sleep. It wasn’t a dream then, the way he sheltered her hand with his, the careful way he made his presence known.

There is no natural light in the room to signal the dawn, and there are no sounds from the other bedrooms. She turns her head to watch Daryl, leaving her hand where it is. He is on his side facing her, hair falling across his forehead, the skin under his eyes smudged with tiredness.Your fault, she thinks to herself, and remembers the despair in his face as she came out of her panic attack. His fingers quiver against her skin. His shirt is pulled across his chest. He told her how to gut a fish, during the night, described the process in such detail that she could picture his hands moving over the scales, could see the marble eye of the fish.

He does not wake when she moves her hand away from his, or when she scoots to the end of the bed to stand up. She takes his vest off and lays it on the comforter, taking clean clothes from the closet before going into the bathroom. They have hot water here, as long as the sun is shining, and she groans with pleasure as she climbs into the shower, cranking the heat up for a moment, her skin turning pink. Lifting her face to the spray, she feels the salt on her cheeks turn slick and then rinse away. She has cried so much in the last two weeks. She does not grieve Ed, but perhaps she is grieving something else, something lost years before he died, which she never missed until now.

Daryl and his vest are gone when she emerges from the bathroom, the bed neatly made. The sheets are still warm when she touches them, and she has a strange urge to rest her face on the pillow where he lay, to inhale the traces of him that are left. She is puzzled by the degree of comfort she finds in his presence, by the physical element to it: the sound and scent of him, the shape of his sternum under the heel of her hand. She should know better than to trust any man so easily, than to rely on anyone but herself.

Shane is sitting at the kitchen table when she goes downstairs, his gun in pieces before him, a coffee pot bubbling on the stove. He raises an eyebrow as she descends.

“Mornin’, Carol. Sleep well?”

“Morning. Yes, thank you.” She fetches a mug, feeling his eyes on her back, and pours herself some coffee. “You?”

“Took last watch.” He smiles at her when she turns around, a lazy, knowing smile which she doesn’t like. “Daryl was just here. Early birds, botha you.”

She doesn’t know how to react to the information, because Shane sounds so much like Ed in this moment, Ed who only ever mentioned other men as a test. The man who ran the gardening service, the mechanic at the garage, Sophia’s teacher in fourth grade...Carol was accused of having designs on them all because she smiled a certain way, or was too polite, or knew their names.

“Oh,” is all she says to Shane, but her face is hot. He takes a sip of coffee, studying her.

“Sophia with Lori?” His tone has changed, cooled. She nods. “Two kids’re a lot for a pregnant woman to deal with, dontcha think?”

Carol lowers her eyes automatically at the current of aggression in his voice, at the way he leans towards her, his elbows on the table, the parts of his gun absorbing the light as it reaches him.

“You’re right,” she says. Her voice feels wrong. It is a voice she left behind with Ed’s corpse, meek and acquiescent, and it tastes rotten in her mouth. “I’ll take them off her hands today.”

The cop grunts and sits back. Carol walks slowly towards the stairs, loath to turn her back on him, and ascends as carefully as if she were picking her away between rocks in a flooded river, past the entrance to the living area and towards the heavy steel door that leads to the stairs. It stands ajar. Someone else is outside already.

She climbs faster as she gets closer to ground level, and she is panting as she steps out of the entrance building, into the soft, rosy light of sunrise. Walking towards the solar panels, she slows and catches her breath, holding her coffee in both hands. The grass glistens with dew, the trees surrounding the property dark silhouettes against the pastel sky.

Near the panels, she smells cigarette smoke, and on their far side, where the black silicon is washed with pink, she finds Daryl. He is sitting on a low concrete block with a metal cover set into the top—some kind of meter, perhaps—his coffee mug on the grass at his feet. Silently, she goes to sit beside him. The metal is cold under her thighs. Daryl, squinting at the sunrise through a drifting haze of smoke, acknowledges her with a dip of his chin, but minutes pass before either of them speaks.

“Rain later,” he says eventually, and she feels a rush of gratitude that he has chosen to discuss the weather and not the way she behaved in the night. “Probably gonna hunt.”

Carol takes a sip of coffee. It is cooling, the blend something fancy and unfamiliar to her.

“Does the rain make it harder to track?” she asks. Daryl’s injured leg is straightened in front of him, his hand absently massaging the thigh muscle.

“Sometimes. Covers the hunter’s scent though. An’ the deer tend to be more active if it’s real cold.”

“I envy you,” she murmurs. “Getting out there.”

He looks at her at last, and she offers him a smile.

“I’m sorry about last night. I—”

His brow furrows. “Stop apologisin’.” He takes a drag, staring ahead once more. She looks down at the coffee in her mug and tries to find a word that isn’tsorry.

“I—I—Ed, he—”

“I get it.” Daryl rests the hand holding his cigarette on his knee. “Was the same with my old man. Tryna say sorry enough times, in the right way, so he wouldn’...” He loses confidence on the final phrase, the words muffled.

She inhales deeply, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. The air is brittle as ice in her lungs. She can’t remember ever speaking to someone who understood her this way, without explanation, except Sophia. And with her daughter, she mostly foregoes words when it comes to Ed. Their understanding is in the grace they give each other for their idiosyncrasies and triggers, in the way they manage their expectations of each other.

“Didn’ seem like it helped,” Daryl says bluntly. “Last night. Me bein’ there.” He lifts the cigarette to his lips, and she opens her eyes and looks through the fence into the trees. Light is seeping through the canopy, branches fading into view.

“It did,” she says. “I know how it seemed and I’m—but it did help. You helped.”

He makes a doubtful sound in his throat, and stops rubbing his injury, drinking from his mug.

“I slept more than I have been lately, and I woke up so—so peacefully this morning.” She thinks of his fingers on hers, the way he pressed her palm to his chest in the night. “That hasn’t happened since Ed died.”

His mug clinks on the metal between them, and he taps the end of his cigarette with his thumb, a restless, agitated movement. She waits, and after a moment he exhales loudly through his nose and pushes the hair off his forehead with the side of his hand.

“Was—was like that for me after, uh, after my old man died.” He is a blur in her periphery. “Dreamt of him all the time.” He shakes his head as though he is trying to get water out of his ears. “Was the opposite of what I expected.”

“Me too,” she replies. “I thought Ed—I thought he’d be gone.”

Daryl turns to her, and she meets his eyes reluctantly. His gaze is soft, his teeth worrying his lower lip as he waits for her full attention. The deep rose of the horizon disappears, and she sees only the summer blue of his eyes as he speaks, in a voice as gentle as his hand on her cheek last night.

“He will be.”

The assurance is kind in way she isn’t used to, intimate in a way she hardly understands anymore. His compassion is unwieldy, more than she needs or deserves. Her mouth turns down at the corners, and she nods jerkily, breaking their eye contact.

“An’ while he ain’t—while you’re—while you can’t sleep, I’ll be there.” He drops his cigarette butt in the dregs of his coffee, and his shoulders sag. The conversation has drained him, the way she often seems to these days. She is a lot; she always has been. “If ‘s what you want.” He looks away from her, and his voice hardens. “Don’ want people—don’ want ‘em talkin’ sh*t ‘bout you.”

“Or about you.” She knows him well enough, she thinks, to know he would not want to be linked with her in that way.Sexually.Romantically. She blushes, and remembers what he knows of her, what he has seen and heard. “I don’t want that.”

He looks down at the dirt, his face set, and nods once. She thinks of his arms around her in the kitchen, and marvels that he could give her even that much of himself without remembering what she is, without feeling the disgust she feels for herself.

In the woods, the birds are waking up, fragments of song rising from the trees as the sky turns the white of riversand. Sophia will be waking, and everyone will need breakfast soon. But Carol sits a little longer, her coffee cold in her mug, until, without another word, Daryl gets up and limps away from her, back towards the building behind them.

xxxx

The rain begins as he heads out that afternoon, the splatter of water on leaves like polite applause as the gates of the bunker creak open. The others have come up to bring the vehicles inside, Dale grinning proudly with the gate remote in one hand. The fence where they cut their way in has been tied back together, the gates running off one of the solar batteries. Whoever keeps watch, from today, will have a two-way radio connected to one inside the bunker.

Daryl doesn’t hang around to see them move the cars. He has been eager to leave since he woke this morning to the sound of Carol in the shower, his erection throbbing so painfully against the fly of his jeans that he was afraid he might come when he stood up and the denim chafed against his boxers. He is unused to being so frequently, intensely aroused. His desire is usually a sluggish, deeply buried thing, and he has not slept with anyone for years, has not wanted it nearly enough to make the logistics of it worthwhile. He has sometimes thought there is something wrong with him, with his disinterest in treating women the way his brother does—his brother who might hook up with three different girls in a week. Merle certainly considered Daryl a freak—in the wrong kind of way—because of his distaste for one-night stands and alleyway blow j*bs.

But now, Daryl finds himself living constantly on the cusp of desire; not the generalised need of a healthy middle-aged man, but a need that is uncomfortably specific. As he crosses the road towards the woods, he glances back. Carol is inside the fence talking to Maggie and Hershel, wearing the periwinkle blue sweater Daryl brought her. He wonders whether she likes the way the wool feels against her skin, the silken slide of it as she puts it on. He wonders whether she knows how lovely she is in it, how it brightens her eyes and brings out the silver in her hair. He is a fool, and if he is not careful, he will humiliate himself more than he has already.

He turns back to the forest when he sees T-Dog approaching her, ducks his head and walks grimly into the trees. Raindrops, sparse and needle sharp in the open, change to rolling drops of water off the ends of the leaves, hitting his scalp in icy, unhurried plops. The leather vest he is wearing still smells faintly of Carol, and he wishes he’d worn something else to hunt. By the time he has finished out here, it will stink once more of his own sweat.

As he walks, not bothering to track so close to the road, he waits for the cold, for the clean earth, to displace the clutter inside him. The land here is flat, the trees repeating endlessly. The sameness of it steadies him, a spirit level brought to centre, until, a couple of miles from the bunker, he is able to face what he has been avoiding since last night. He stops beneath a willow oak, resting his shoulder against the trunk, and closes his eyes.Please please don’t, her chest heaving as she fought for air. Daryl digs his shoulder hard into the bark of the oak. He should have killed Ed at the start, the first time Carol showed up to breakfast at the quarry with bruises on her arms. If he’d known, if he’d understood—

He moans, a low, despairing sound, and slams his forehead into the trunk. The pain is sharp, and he is dizzy for a moment, but he walks on without waiting for it to pass, staggering as his bad leg drags for a few paces. He owes it to her to hear every nightmare for as long as she has them. And he deserves to suffer through the lust he feels whenever he is with her, deserves to lie there frantic with want for her, knowing what he feels is unrequited.I don’t want that. Who would?

He shoots a deer towards sunset. The only sign that the day is ending is the deepening of the shadows, the sky between the branches darkening towards gunmetal grey. The deer, which he has been tracking for an hour, takes partial shape at the edge of a grove of pine trees: one antler and the dip of its back, a slender leg and sloping hoof. It falls in near silence, a gusting breath and a dull thud as it folds to the ground. Daryl’s hair is soaked, his hands rubbery with cold and wet. As he dresses the creature, the heat of its blood and meat is a comfort, the reek of it drawing him out of the brooding melancholy that has stayed with him throughout the hunt. The hem of his vest skims across the animal’s flesh as he leans over to slice the belly, the leather soaking up blood. He is himself again, alone here, the dirt drinking his offering, Carol’s scent lost for good.

Chapter 20

Chapter Text

They play Pictionary after dinner, though Carol tries to excuse herself so she can wash up. Daryl isn’t back yet, and though she knows it is to be expected, she is worried: about his leg, about the dark, about the miles of forest he doesn’t know. She sets a full plate aside for him, and some extra rolls from the batch she baked. She would like to be aboveground, so she could see the moment he emerged from the woods. But Shane is on watch for another hour, and she does not want to be alone with him.

The boardgame lasts through the change in shifts, Glenn replacing Shane, the cop joining Maggie and Hershel’s team. Grouped with Sophia and T-Dog, Carol laughs and draws and guesses, but finds it hard to relax. There are too many undercurrents among the party, too much unacknowledged tension. Shane mocks Rick every time he fails to get one of Lori’s clues, and flirts openly with Andrea in the same breath. T-Dog is oddly solicitous, and though usually Carol enjoys his company, Sophia seems subdued by his presence tonight. He tries to loosen up the child with jokes, but it has the opposite effect, Sophia’s polite responses become quieter and more stilted as time passes. Carol must make up for her daughter’s reticence while also trying silently to reassure the girl, and by the time they reach what is likely to be the final round, she is anxious for the game to end.

They hear the stairwell door creak open as Rick, Lori and Carl win, and Carol gets to her feet with an alacrity that draws the attention of everyone not celebrating the victory. She opens her mouth, flustered, but before she can speak, Sophia heads for the spiral staircase, her sneakers squeaking on the wood as she hurries up it. Carol happens to catch Dale’s eye, and, to her surprise, the old man smiles kindly, nodding towards the stairs. It is all the encouragement she needs, no matter how unexpected its source.

Daryl is filthy, his hands grimy, his shirt wet through and the back of his vest stained with blood and rainwater. The thick steel door stands open, and in the stairwell is the body of a deer, its legs trussed. Sophia is peering at it across the threshold, Daryl at her side. He does not notice Carol as she approaches them.

“Wasn’t it heavy?” the girl asks him. He shrugs, and she looks up at him. Carol stops a little way behind them, the rug thick and soft beneath her feet.

“Guess it was,” he says. “No other way to get it back ‘cept carryin’ it, though.”

“You were gone for so long.” Sophia looks down once more, her voice dropping. “I thought maybe you were lost.”

Daryl shifts on his feet, glancing at the child’s bent head, and Carol folds her arms across her chest, fearful that he will blunder in his response to her daughter’s vulnerability.

“‘Member that time I ate the worms?” he says. Carol frowns, puzzled, but Sophia’s shoulders shake in a soft laugh as she nods. “That was the last time I got lost. After that, made sure I knew how to track well enough to find my way home from anywhere.”

“‘Cause you didn’t want to eat worms again?” The girl is smiling up at him, her face open and attentive. Carol stares at her, memorising her expression, memorising the lilt of amusem*nt in her voice.

“‘S exactly why.” Daryl is not smiling, but there is a warmth to his face, to the words, which Carol finds almost as intoxicating as her child’s ease with the man. Sophia giggles, and Daryl turns towards Carol, nodding at her. He knew she was there all along, she realises, and flushes.

“Good hunting, I see,” she says to cover her self-consciousness. He grunts and jerks his head towards the deer.

“Gonna butcher it so we can store it properly,” he says. “Just catchin’ my breath.”

She notices, then, that his posture favours his injured leg, which is trembling, a fine quiver that is no doubt from carrying the deer home. She takes an involuntary step forward, her brow furrowed.

“Surely you can leave it for tomorrow,” she says. “You’ve done enough for today.”

“Shane an’ I can butcher it.” Rick is at the top of the stairs, Lori and Carl behind him. “Nice work, Daryl. Get cleaned up. We’ll deal with this.”

The hunter grunts, limping towards the hallway lined with bedrooms as the rest of the group crowds up the stairs. Glenn gives a cheer at the sight of the fresh meat, and Sophia withdraws as the others gather at the door, making her way to Carol and resting her head against her mother’s arm. Carol senses in her the same weak-kneed relief that she feels herself, the release of a tension greater than she’d realised she was holding until she saw Daryl on the threshold.

“Come,” she murmurs to Sophia. “Let’s warm up Daryl’s dinner.”

xxxx

He runs cold water over the puckered wound on his thigh, until it is numb and he is shivering almost too hard to keep his footing on the shower tiles. Deep in the muscle, the bullet burns. Hershel says he’ll stop feeling it after a time; the wound will remake his leg as it heals, accommodating this new piece of him. Daryl can’t imagine not feeling it, not having the constant, aching pressure of its presence in his limb.

The rest of his shower is slow, his arms so tired that shampooing his hair is an effort. He scrubs his nails with more care than usual, scowling down at them, telling himself it is not because he might touch Carol later, might brush the back of her hand to wake her from a nightmare. When every trace of dirt and gore is gone, he dries himself and dresses in clean jeans from Rick’s last run, and a T-shirt that used to be Merle’s, black and threadbare.

Someone knocks on his bedroom door as he rubs his hair roughly with the towel, and he limps stiffly to open it. Sophia is outside, carefully holding a tray containing food and a mug of tea. His stomach rumbles, but he glares at the girl.

“Ain’t gotta bring me food like I’m some kinda prince,” he mutters. “Can get my own.”

Confusion flickers across her face, and she takes a step back from the doorway.

“Mama said…” She trails off, her cheeks pink. Her wrists, sticking out the cuffs of her jumper, make him think of Carol’s, the bruise around one that faded just days ago. Ed is still there, will always be there, his signature carved into her skin, the weight of his expectations memorialised in scars. Daryl sighs and stands aside.

“C’mon then. Thanks.” He takes the tray from her, and leaves the door open as she walks slowly into his room. There is squash, potato and bean stew, three fresh bread rolls, and a salad of beets and rice. More food than he has eaten in a single meal since the last time he got a deer and they had excess meat they had to finish. He stares down at the plates, the neatly arranged cutlery.

“She—likes to—to look after people.”

He looks up sharply. Sophia is watching him from the middle of the room, her voice tremulous.

“My mama. When I’m sick, she makes me a tray like that.”

“I ain’t sick,” he retorts.

Her colour deepens, and she tugs at the sheath on her belt with one hand.

“You were…you were out in the rain,” she says, her voice fading. “You…brought meat for us all.”

He grunts and goes to sit on the edge of his bed. He has one of the single rooms, which nonetheless has a bed of generous size, along with an armchair identical to that in the Peletiers’ room. His crossbow leans in a corner, the bolts from today’s hunt on top of a sleek, modern dresser, waiting to be cleaned. His dirty clothes are slung over the back of the chair, his boots kicked to one side, and he wishes he’d taken more care as he got undressed. He wasn’t expecting a visitor.

“Pretty,” the girl breathes. He looks up from the roll he has torn in half. She is standing at the dresser, holding a feather banded with dark brown and white.

“Red-shouldered hawk,” he says, and stuffs half the roll into his mouth, exhaling crumbs as he continues. “Young one. When it’s grown the brown’ll turn black.”

“Did you see it?” She strokes the feather against her cheek, closing her eyes for a second.

“Nah.” He swallows, and plucks a piece of potato from the stew with his fingers. “Jus’ that.”

She hums, and puts it down reverently, picking up the pebble next to it. The stew is spicy and rich, and Daryl dunks the rest of the roll in the gravy.

“Is this a special kind of stone?” She turns to look at him, weighing the pebble in her palm. He shrugs, avoiding her eyes.

“Nah. Jus’…liked it.” He frowns, waiting for her to laugh, the crust of the roll cracking in his grasp.

“I like it too,” Sophia says thoughtfully. He peers at her. She is examining the pebble, her hair a bright blonde curtain across her profile. “The dark parts look like a flower.”

“Yeah. That’s…yeah.” He blushes. She looks up and smiles at him, placing the stone back on the dresser, and he drops his gaze to the tray, scooping more stew with a piece of crust. When he looks up again, taking a gulp of tea, the child is running her finger down the seam of the sheath in which he keeps his old knife. He wears two now, one looted from the same place he got hers and Carol’s.

“Soph.”

She turns to him, whipping her hand away from the weapon as though expecting a reprimand.

“Ain’t gotta worry ‘bout your momma,” he says. “At night.”

She studies him, her expression grave, and he clears his throat.

“Stayed with her last night.” He scowls, shy suddenly. “Sat with her. Gonna keep it up till she don’t…need it. You stay with Carl an’ get some rest.”

She nods quickly, turning back to the knife, clearly sensing his reluctance to discuss the issue. But there is an easing in her demeanour, her lips curving into a slight smile as she gazes down at the leather sheath. He feels a flicker of affection for her.

“C’mere,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. She obeys, stopping in front of him, and he gestures at the knife she wears. “Show me how you draw it.”

She nods eagerly, but hesitates, her fingers wiggling near the knife handle, her throat working. He huffs impatiently, and her chin wobbles. Ashamed, he tries to catch her eye.

“Hey. Ain’t expectin’ you to know a damn thing ‘bout knives.” He sets the tray beside him on the bed. “Ain’t gonna—ain’t gonna get mad if you drop it or whatever.”

She nods, with less certainty this time, and blinks rapidly. He stands up and she flinches, her fingers closing on the knife handle, her pupils flaring as she looks up at him. He raises an eyebrow.

“Instinct’s there. Good. Now draw it.”

She fumbles with the clip that secures the knife in the sheath, and yanks the weapon out too forcefully, staggering backwards as she raises it. He grunts approvingly, and she lowers the blade, her chest heaving, her eyes still dark. There is a power he sometimes forgets in realising, for the first time, that one is capable of killing another creature. He felt it the first time he held a buck knife, aged seven, the blade as broad as his forearm.

“Good. Put it back.”

She sheathes the knife, and he goes to the bed and shovels some salad into his mouth, washing it down with more tea.

“Slower this time.” He turns to face her. “An’ put it on your left hip. Draw across your body.”

She repeats the movement over and over, without complaint, while he finishes his meal. He corrects her mid-mouthful, licking his fingers clean and showing her the right way to grip the handle after she drops the knife. To his surprise, he enjoys himself: she is quick, she listens well, and once she sees that he won’t get angry, she relaxes and becomes absorbed in getting the movement right. When the tray is empty, he puts one of his own knives on his belt and they practise together. He makes her laugh by twirling his knife after he draws, or by tossing it up and catching it, showing off like a kid, basking in her admiration. Sophia is learning to dodge when Daryl hears footsteps in the hallway, and turns, his knife up. Startled, Carol lifts her hands.

“Sorry.” He sheathes his knife sheepishly, and she shakes her head, lowering her hands. But she is breathing quickly, and there is genuine fear in her eyes. He takes a step closer to her, and repeats the apology softly, warily, and she gives another unsteady smile.

“It’s fine, really, Daryl. Next time I’ll know what to expect.” Her gaze shifts to Sophia, a glimmer of pride in her eyes. “You made Daryl teach you during his dinner?”

The girl has put her knife away, and she grins at her mother.

“I didn’t!” She looks at Daryl uncertainly, and her smile falters. “Did I?”

He snorts. “Nah. Just seemed like a good opportunity.” He looks back at Carol. “Thanks for the meal. Was real tasty.”

She nods, and enters the room to collect the tray, glancing around as she does.

“Feels like you in here,” she remarks, and then looks embarrassed. “I just mean—”

“It smells like you,” Sophia says earnestly, and Carol stifles a laugh as Daryl’s ears redden.

“Gonna clean up in the mornin’,” he mumbles, and Carol’s face softens as she reaches the doorway with the tray.

“She means it smells like the forest,” she says gently. “Like outside.” She lowers her eyes. “It’s nice.”

For a moment he can’t move, his eyes fixed on her face, the sweet mouth and dark lashes, the delicate curve of her jaw. And then Sophia touches his elbow, and he spins round in fright, startling both her and Carol.

“Thank you for the lesson,” the child says in a rush, her eyes wide. He nods, stepping away from her to try and salvage his equilibrium.

“Thanks for dinner,” he says, staring at the floor between the two of them, hoping they understand he is including them both. He is still standing there, unmoving, as they leave, Carol instructing her daughter to get ready for bed.

xxxx

She isn’t sure he will come, even though he said he would be there while she needed him. Sophia goes happily to the Grimeses’ room, and Carol curls up in the armchair, her feet on the edge of the cushion, listening to the bunker quieten down. Lori didn’t seem to care whether Sophia stayed with them regularly or not.It’s not like Rick and I are having sex, she murmured to Carol.I’m so damn tired and it’s the last thing I want.Send her whenever.

The knock is soft, and he does not turn the handle, but waits for her to open the door. She is in leggings and an oversized grey T-shirt, better covered than she was last night. He does not meet her eyes at first, gazing past her head as he clears his throat.

“Wasn’t sure if I should—”

“Come in.” She stands aside, closing the door behind him, and he goes to the armchair, stopping with his back to her. The T-shirt he wears hangs off his shoulders, the stitches in the back of his neck a small black smudge.

“Soph with Carl?” He glances back at her, lifting a thumb to his mouth and gnawing at the nail.

“Yeah,” she replies, and goes to sit on the edge of the bed. “Lori said, uh, anytime is fine.”

He hums, rocking a little on the balls of his feet. The awkwardness of the exchange is wearying, and she knows she will have to be the one to confront it.

“Were you okay last night?” she asks. “Sleeping here?” She flattens her palm against the comforter. Dropping his hand from his mouth, he shrugs. The tips of his ears are pink.

“Sure. Yeah.”

“You don’t have to, it just—seems easier.”Than getting up to comfort me. The words wait, unspoken, between them. Daryl takes a deep breath and comes to sit beside her on the mattress. She can feel the warmth of him immediately, even though he does not touch her.

“I didn’ scare you?” he asks, his eyes on the floor, his hands hanging loosely between his knees. “Last night, you didn’ think I was him?”

She gives a dry laugh, rubbing one arm with her other hand, cold despite the heat Daryl radiates.

“I did, I think.” She clears her throat. “Once. I don’t remember properly.” A sudden urge to weep closes her throat, and a moment passes before she can continue. “I’m not used to being—I’m not used to having a man—a man with me who isn’t Ed. I mean, present with me.” She pauses again, her breath hitching, and Daryl’s shoulder bumps hers gently. “I’m really sorry for that. For—confusing you with him, because I know you—I know—”

“Ain’t important.” His voice is low and gravelly. “Long as you still…want me here.”

“I do.” Her reply is a kind of sigh, her longing so naked that she waits for him to demur, to change his mind and take the chair. But instead, he nods, and when she crawls to her side of the bed, he lies down on his back at the edge, his arms behind his head.

“‘Night,” he murmurs, staring up at the ceiling.

“Goodnight, Daryl.”

She dreams of the fight she had with Ed the night she found him watching Sophia in the bath. She screamed at him, struggled with him when he seized her wrists, all the caution she’d learnt through years of marriage forgotten in her rage and disgust. In the dream, he beats her just as he did that night, with a savagery that makes her fear for her life, and when she can no longer move, when the light is veiled with red, Ed places a pillow over her face. It smells of fresh linen, the fabric dry and clinging to her mouth. He presses down.

She is weak, but she cannot die. If she dies, he will do what he wants with Sophia. So she fights again, ignoring the pain in her limbs, the taste of metal in her mouth, the way her lungs burn. She kicks and hits and claws at her husband, feels his skin break under her nails. Air trickles into her mouth, too little too slowly.

“Stop, Carol. You’re gonna—”

She lashes out in the direction of his voice, striking his jaw, and he grunts. Something is different; something is wrong. He isn’t calling her names or slapping her. Her terror grows, and she kicks as hard as she can, her foot hitting something soft that makes him hiss in pain, her arm thudding against a wall. A current of agony travels to her shoulder. In the next second, he is on top of her, his hips pinning her to the mattress, his hands around her wrists as he slowly, inexorably, pushes her arms down, to rest on either side of her face. She tries to buck him off, but he is too heavy, too solid, and as he lowers his face beside hers, she sobs, because she knows what he will do next.

“Sophia, run.” She struggles against his grip, crying for her child. “Sophia.”

“She’s okay. She’s with Lori.” His voice is like fine-grained sandpaper against her skin. Her fingers curl, brushing over the hands holding her wrists, and her chest pushes up against his. She doesn’t understand him, can’t figure out why he hasn’t reached down to open his pants yet. His voice cracks as he speaks again, his mouth so close to her ear that she shivers.

“I wanna let you go.” He takes a shuddering breath. “But you’re gonna hurt yourself. I need you to wake up so I can let you go.”

Writhing beneath him as another surge of panic overwhelms her, she sobs, and he murmurs her name,Carol, his anguish only bewildering her further.

“Sophia,” she pleads, and he lifts his head to look down at her. His eyes are not her husband’s, and he does not stink of alcohol and sweat, and his body atop hers is lean and hard. He does not spit or sneer at her. As the blood haze fades from her vision, his face blurs into white and blue and brown, and Carol frowns.

“Sophia’s safe,” he whispers. “I promise. Ipromise.”

He releases one of her hands, the pad of his thumb sweeping across her cheekbone, through the heat of her tears. His body presses her deeper into the mattress as she stops fighting him. Despite his weight, she can breathe. She can breathe, and she can see.

Two things happen at once. Among the bony pressure of his hips, the broad expanse of his chest, the bracket of his thighs around hers, she becomes aware of his erection, blunt and heavy, against her thigh, and she whimpers desperately. In the same moment, he flings himself off her, rolling to the edge of the bed and sitting up. Another sob tears from her, muted by her hand over her mouth, and she reaches down and scrubs at the fabric of her sweatpants where she felt him. He is breathing heavily, his back to her, and she is devastated without understanding why. Sophia, Ed’s suffocating rage, the thick line of Daryl’s co*ck.

He is cursing,Jesus Jesus Christ f*ck f*ck f*ck. She turns onto her side and starts to sit up. Her muscles ache, an elbow throbbing, her weak shoulder stiff, and she remembers, dimly, striking Ed in her dream. Wiping her eyes, she looks at Daryl, his face sunk in his hands now. On the back of his arm, where the skin is pale and soft, there are four red stripes where her nails scraped across his skin.

“Daryl.” She closes her hand on the cotton of her pants against her inner thigh. Before she can continue, he speaks.

“I swear to God.” He sounds on the verge of tears. “I swear to God, Carol, I wasn’ tryna—I wasn’ gonna—”

“Iknow.” Even in her distress, her answer is immediate. Even in her horror at feeling his erection, she knows his own is worse, understands that he has already convicted himself of crimes he would never commit. Ignoring the twinge in her limbs, she crawls over to him, and puts a hand on his shoulder. It is rock hard with tension, rising and falling with each quick breath. “I know, Daryl. It’s a—a reflex.”

He does not respond. She grazes her fingers over the scratch on his arm.

“I hurt you,” she whispers. “I hit you. Didn’t I?”

“Doesn’ matter,” he says hoarsely. “You were hittin’ the wall. Knockin’ your arm.” He hangs his head, and she rests her hand against his bicep. “Couldn’ wake you, an’ you were hurtin’ yourself.sh*t.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “I shouldna done that.f*ck, I’m so goddamnstupid.”

She does not have enough within her, in this moment, to reassure him and to keep herself from coming apart again. It is early morning, hours before dawn. She slept for longer, before her nightmare, than she has since the group found them. But the darkness of this hour is thick and strange, monsters waiting in every corner. She can still feel Ed’s hand at her throat, still see him peering through the bathroom door, and the man hunched before her, fists gripping handfuls of his hair, is innocent of it all.

“Please stay.” The words are thin, pathetic, almost worse to speak than all the things Ed made her say over the years. Daryl turns, his eyes rimmed with red, his face lined with misery, and her fingers flutter at the base of her throat, her mouth trembling. “Tonight, please stay, don’t—don’t run away. I’m sorry I hit you, I’m sorry I was scared of you, I’m sorry—”

The rest of the words are lost as he leans into her, his forehead bumping her shoulder, his face hidden against the ridge of her collarbone. It is not gentle, the thud of his brow, and it must hurt him a little. He does not put his arms around her, but she slides hers across his shoulders instinctively, her hands stroking the rigid muscles of his upper back, her head bent to his. She doesn’t know why he needs comfort, but being able to give it restores something to her—power, perhaps, or simply humanity, the sense that she is not entirely broken. Eventually, as she holds him, his arms wrap loosely around her waist, his face turning into her neck, and she brings a hand to his cheek, her fingertips in his hair, cradling him as his breathing slows.

When she grows too tired to sit any longer, when his head grows too heavy, she eases herself back onto the mattress and he follows, his eyes avoiding hers as he settles at the edge of the bed, leaving a space between them. She is insubstantial without the weight of him in her arms, and she fumbles for his hand across the sheet, clutching it tightly even when he tries to move it away.

“Daryl—”

“Ain’t gotta talk about it,” he says dully. “Jus’—leave it. Forget it.”

Already, the memory of his body on hers has taken on the quality of a dream. She turns to look at him. His forearm rests over his eyes. She squeezes his hand, and as she eases her grip, he withdraws his fingers, turning over so he has his back to her, tucking his arms across his chest and his hands into his armpits. She watches him until he falls asleep, pulling himself more tightly into a ball as he does so.

But as soon as she closes her eyes, she is beneath him again, inside a dream that is not a dream. She enters the memory curiously, registering each detail with the knowledge now that it is Daryl, not Ed, pinning her down.I wanna let you go, though his body tells her something else entirely. She guides her thoughts scrupulously around that moment, around the sensation of his arousal, and focuses on everything else about him. The chafed skin of his knuckles under her fingers, the breadth of his chest against hers, the sense of strength restrained. He didn’t rut against her or hurt her or grope her breasts, didn’t crush her with his bulk or take from her while she was at his mercy.

He doesn’t stir when she moves closer to him, though she knows the instant he wakes. She is crying again, silently, not wanting him to hear her. She huddles at his back, her arms between her chest and his shirt, and she rests her palms lightly on either side of his spine. He inhales deeply, holds the breath, and she closes her eyes and waits for him to shrug off her touch. But after a moment, he sighs, and relaxes, his stillness soothing her into a sleep that is once more dreamless.

Chapter 21

Chapter Text

“We need to go on a run into the city.” Rick plucks a flake of coconut off the top of his oats and frowns, touching it to the tip of his tongue before dropping it back into the bowl. “Take stock of what we’ve got, find what we don’t, make sure we can survive down here for an extended period.”

“This place is pretty well supplied, isn’t it?” asks Glenn. “What else do we need?”

The group is breakfasting together, only Dale, who is on watch, missing. Daryl sits between Shane and Hershel, chewing grimly at his cereal. At the far end of the table, Carol is listening to Andrea, smiling and nodding, though her face is pale and drawn. This morning, Daryl woke before she did, and left her in her room. She was curled against his back, and he was hard, his dreams full of her scent and softness. He’d already jerked off twice before it was time for breakfast.

“I’m talkin’ about more winter clothes—”

“School supplies for the kids,” interjects Lori, who Daryl is certain has no intention of teaching the kids anything herself.

“Seeds,” says Maggie. “Daddy and I were talkin’ about tryin’ to keep plants alive down here. Herbs, that kinda thing.”

“Wontcha need like a…fancy sun lamp or whatever?” Shane takes a sip of coffee. “This ain’t a shoppin’ spree. The more places we loot, the greater the risk.”

“No harm in makin’ a list.” Rick is using his peacemaker’s voice, his patronising cop voice, which gets under Daryl’s skin. “We make a list, we look at a map, we try our luck.”

“Who’s going to go?”

Daryl lifts his eyes from his bowl at the sound of Carol’s voice. She is looking straight at him but shifts her gaze to Rick as soon as their eyes meet. The deputy shrugs.

“Who wantsta go?”

Carol glances at Daryl again, her expression anxious. He wants to go. God knows he wants to get out of here for a night or two, get away from her need and her grief and herbody. But she says she is sleeping better with him there, even after just two nights, and when he imagines her trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake, the food in his stomach becomes heavy as cement.

“I’ll skip this one,” he says. “Leg ain’t right yet.” He avoids looking at Carol. His eyes settle on Sophia, who smiles at him, and he looks down. The kitchen is redolent of herbs and meat. Carol put a haunch of venison on while she was making breakfast, and it will roast all day, he heard her telling the kids, until by tonight it is meltingly tender and full of flavour.

“Who then?” Lori sounds put out. “If Daryl stays…”

“Me, Rick,” Shane tells her. “Glenn an’ T-Dog. Dale if he can keep up.” He chuckles. No one joins him. Daryl pushes his chair back and stands.

“I’ll get him an’ he can decide. Nearly time for me to take over anyway.”

He takes his bowl and coffee mug to the sink. He is rinsing them when Carol comes to stand beside him, her own bowl in her hands. He grunts a quiet greeting, his fingers slipping on the porcelain, and turns the faucet off. Behind them, Lori and Andrea are listing shampoo and face cream brands, laughing as Rick tries to remind them that they have to take what they can get. Carol smells of rosemary, juniper, and sweet orange.

“You—you wake up okay?” he asks without looking at her, the dishrag in his hand. He was afraid she might have a bad dream after he’d left this morning, but he couldn’t face her after last night, not when he woke up with his co*ck straining against his pants. She looks down at the counter.

“I did. Thanks.” She pauses. He puts his bowl down and starts to turn towards the stairs. Her fingers brush his forearm, and he jerks away from her, his eyes flicking to hers in alarm. “I’m—I’m glad you’re not going on the run.” Her eyes are silver. He thinks of her nails scraping up his arm, her hips bucking beneath his. She wets her lips nervously. Her tongue is pink and quick. “But you don’t have to stay just because—”

“Leg ain’t right,” he says shortly. “Like I said.”

She nods, and he leaves her at the basin, limping up the spiral stairs and heading for the exit. The climb to ground level warms his muscles, the discomfort in his thigh turning to relative ease of movement by the time he emerges from the bunker building.

Dale is standing with his back against the wall, watching the trees beyond the solar panels, and he greets Daryl with a smile.

“Best shift of the day, you’ve got,” he says, and Daryl shrugs, reaching for his cigarettes. The old man shakes his head when offered one, and watches Daryl thoughtfully as he lights his own. “How’re you holding up, Daryl?”

“Fine.” He shoves his lighter back into his pocket and squints at Dale. “You?”

“Good. Excellent,” the other man replies, and gestures at the trees, the sky above them lilac and streaked with gold. “What a luxury to be able to enjoy a sunrise, eh? Without worrying about food or walkers or cold?”

Daryl exhales away from Dale and looks back at him skeptically. “Ain’t no guarantees. Even here.”

The old man sighs. “No. There never are. But we should enjoy this place nonetheless.” He picks up his rifle from where it rests against the wall. “They still eating breakfast?”

“Finishin’ up. Discussin’ a run.”

Dale nods, but makes no move to leave. Daryl usually enjoys smoking his first cigarette of the day alone, but there is something restful about doing so in the older man’s company. He tilts his face skywards, watching a flock of birds pass overhead, and Dale scratches his beard.

“You aren’t going on the run?”

Daryl shakes his head.

“Your leg, or…?” The old man gives a slight smile, and Daryl scowls.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “My leg.”

“Probably best that you’re staying,” says Dale reassuringly. “Carol and Sophia seem to be relying on you.”

Daryl snorts, and flicks ash from his cigarette, avoiding the other man’s gaze.

“Bullsh*t,” he says bluntly. Dale chuckles, but when he speaks again, his voice is sombre, gentle.

“It’s a good thing, Daryl. For them and for you.”

The sky has lightened to mauve, on the verge of grey, and the forest is awake. Daryl thinks of Carol’s face last night as his erection pressed against her thigh—her realisation followed by horror, her terrified whimper —and spits into the patchy grass at his feet.

“You dunno what the hell you’re talkin’ ‘bout,” he says belligerently, and jams his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, speaking around it. “Should keep to your own damn business.”

Unruffled, Dale observes him, a faint smile playing on his lips.

“Don’t mind me,” he says. “I’m just glad to see that you and Carol have found a friend in each other.” He sniffs, and hoists his gun onto his shoulder. “You’re good people. Both of you.”

Daryl scuffs a foot over the dirt and glares at the ground as the old man leaves, his footsteps thudding on the concrete floor of the entrance building.Good people. Dale doesn’t know sh*t, not about Daryl, anyway, or what he’s really like, the way he manhandled Carol and frightened her, the way he offered to help her sleep and then became part of her nightmares. He drops his cigarette butt and grinds it out with his heel as he heads for the fence.

xxxx

She walks the hallway collecting laundry after cleaning up the kitchen. The group has divided to deal with different tasks. Sophia is reluctantly doing some Math with Carl at the kitchen table while Lori draws up a wishlist for the upcoming run. In the business hub, Rick, Glenn, T-Dog and Dale are poring over a map. They don’t acknowledge Carol as she passes them.

She slips in and out of the rooms quickly, emptying hampers. Shane’s door is closed and there is no reply when she knocks, so she moves onto the Grimeses’ room, her own, and then Daryl’s. His door is standing ajar, the interior as untidy as it was last night. The air is cool, the only light leaking in from the strip lights in the hallway. The bunker is illuminated to an extent that mimics daylight, but in rooms where the lights are turned off, the darkness is an immediate reminder that they are not at ground level.

Carol lingers in this space as she didn’t in the other bedrooms, comfortable doing so perhaps because the door was open, perhaps because she was invited in here last night. Or perhaps merely because it is Daryl’s. His scent is everywhere, the dresser scattered with trinkets from outdoors—a feather, a pebble, three porcupine quills, a sprig of something with a strong minty smell. The bed is made, but the comforter is creased. He chose the smallest room, she realises, looking around, and her chest tightens a little, for reasons she can’t articulate.

The clothes he wore to hunt are still damp, hanging over the armchair where they were last night, and she gathers them up before clearing his hamper too. She puts his leather vest on top—she will have to hand scrub it and dry it carefully. She pauses in the doorway, her arms full, as she leaves, looking back. It feels safe to her, this rumpled room where she watched her daughter—her daughter—draw a knife last night, her face alight with joy at her success.

Carol closes the door behind herself, and smiles as she heads down the hallway. The click of a lock is not enough to draw her out of her contemplation, but the sight of Andrea and Shane leaving his room together pulls her abruptly back to the present. The blonde is murmuring something in a low, teasing voice, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, and Shane laughs as he follows her from the bedroom, one hand on her hip as he bends forward to listen. Carol stops in her tracks, and Andrea notices her.

“Carol.” There is no awkwardness in Andrea’s demeanour, no embarrassment. She smirks, and Shane drops his hand from her waist.

“There, uh, there a Maytag in this place?” He is suppressing laughter, doubtless at Carol’s expense, and she flushes.

“There is, actually,” she replies uncertainly. “Downstairs.”

Shane nods intently, but after a moment turns his head and gives a snort of laughter. Andrea elbows him in the ribs.

“I’ll give you a hand,” the blonde says to Carol. She glances back at Shane and shakes her head at him. “Go and make yourself useful.”

The women walk down the hallway in silence, Shane a few paces behind them. The washer and dryer are in the sprawling living area near the kitchen, a short counter beside them where laundry can be folded. Carol loads the machine and measures out washing powder while Andrea toys with one of the balls on the pool table. Daryl’s vest stays on the counter, the edges stiff with blood.

“So…I’m not missing my vibrator as much these days.”

Carol turns to the other woman and raises an eyebrow. Andrea pouts.

“Don’t look at me like that. We’re both adults and we’re both single.”

“Are you? Still single?” Carol puts down the powder measure and turns on the machine. “Even after…?”

“It’s only sex.” Andrea drops the ball into one of the pockets on the pool table. “A bit of fun.”

Carol leans against the edge of the counter, watching the blonde fiddle with the netting of the pocket.

“What about Lori?” Carol asks softly. Andrea’s hand stills, and when she looks up her face is set grimly.

“What about her?”

“Andrea.” Carol crosses to the pool table.

“Lori is married to Rick,” the other woman says coolly. “What else is there to say?”

Carol studies her for a moment. “Okay.” She hesitates. “I thought for a while that you and Dale might—”

“God no.” Andrea looks uncomfortable. “He’s great but…Have youseenShane?”

Carol has. She has seen the violence in him, the envy, the way he both loves and hates Rick. She has seen him watch Lori as she rests a hand on her flat belly, seen him try to talk to her and be rebuffed because Rick is near. And she has seen the way Shane dismisses Daryl, the way he has condescended to the hunter since the quarry. She regards Andrea in silence, trying to find the right words, and the blonde starts to smile again.

“He knows what he’sdoing, Carol. And it’s nice to feel…something.” Andrea’s gaze shifts to the floor. “Since Amy, there hasn’t been much—there hasn’t been much to enjoy.”

“I know,” Carol says quietly, and takes the other woman’s hand, squeezing it lightly before letting go. “And I’m happy for you if this is what you want.” She pauses, narrowing her eyes. “Are you using protection?”

Andrea gives a shriek of laughter. “Yes,mom. I mean, we’re making sure he doesn’t…”

Carol holds up a hand in mock distaste, but her stomach turns over at the memory of Ed’s hand on the back of her neck, his hips smacking against her ass. “Enough. That’s enough information for now.”

She returns to the Maytag as the other woman chuckles, and she wipes down the counter, fiddles with the leather vest, waiting for the memories to pass.

“Carol?” Andrea sounds subdued, in stark contrast to a moment ago. “I didn’t think—I guess things with Ed weren’t—” She takes a deep breath, and approaches, stopping just behind Carol. Carol tenses. “You deserve some happiness too.”

“I am happy.” Carol forces herself to smile, and turns to Andrea, who regards her skeptically.

“I mean you deserve some…happiness. You know.”

Carol’s chest flushes, heat rising up her face right to her hairline. Andrea grins.

“T-Dog seems like he’d be…attentive,” she suggests.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Perspiration dampens the back of Carol’s shirt. “T-Dog? He wouldn’t want—I—”

“He would and he does.” The blonde woman snorts. “You can’t have missed that.”

Carol’s brow furrows. “He’s very nice, but we’re not—he’s not—”Surely not.“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she says briskly. “I’m not interested in sex. Not now, not ever.”

Andrea opens her mouth, her eyes bright with amusem*nt; but her expression changes in an instant to pity, and to guilt.

“We should have done something, back at the quarry,” she says quietly. Carol’s eyes sting, and she shakes her head, looking down. “No, we should have. All of us. We should have helped you.”

“I wasn’t looking for help.” Carol’s throat feels raw and swollen. “I didn’t ask for help until—until right before Ed died.”

“Daryl?”

She nods.I want to get away from him. Take her away. Can you help me?Her memories of that night are like the tiles in a kaleidoscope, vivid fragments that fall across her vision from time to time: the sickening pain of her dislocated shoulder, the burn of disinfectant as Daryl cleaned her injuries, the way he shook as he held her. She wants him, suddenly, the physicality of him, the undemanding comfort of his patient presence.It’s a reflex, she said to him last night. She meant both his erection and her fright.

Andrea draws her into a hug, Carol’s arms folded between them, her shoulders stiff. The blonde releases her after a moment, and Carol wipes her face and tries to smile.

“I need to check on the venison,” she says, and starts for the door. Behind her, Andrea is silent until Carol reaches the threshold.

“Carol?”

“Hmm?” She glances back.

“I don’t know Daryl so well. I guess we didn’t really hit it off at the start.” Andrea hesitates. “But Dale likes him. And I’m glad he was there when you needed him.”

xxxx

They talk little that night. He comes to her room once everyone else has retired, and knocks. She answers the door in a dark blue tank top and loose cotton pants, the palm of one hand raised to hold a swirl of pale peach lotion. The room smells of orange and grapefruit.

“Hey.” She smiles, and he nods, walking to the middle of the room as she shuts the door. “How was your day?”

Shrugging, he turns to face her, and wishes he hadn’t. She is applying the lotion to her arms, running her fingers over golden skin and freckles, massaging the muscles. The cream leaves a soft sheen behind.Slippery, he thinks, and clears his throat.

“Usual. Yours?” He tries to keep his eyes on her face, though his gaze is drawn to her breasts, her nipples stiff beneath the dark fabric.Jesus. She wipes the last of the lotion over her collarbone, to the neck of her top. She seems oblivious to the way she looks, her manner businesslike and slightly impatient, as though the application of the lotion is a necessary chore. He looks down at his hands, the yellowing calluses under his middle fingers, one of them peeling.

“It was fine. Good.” She walks to the bed, and he peers at her back as she folds down the comforter. The only time he saw her today, apart from breakfast, was dinner, the two of them sitting at opposite ends of the table. All day, he has avoided her. He wonders whether she has been doing the same. She hesitates, the edge of the comforter in her hand, her back still turned to him. In the glow of the lamplight, he can see the curve of her ass through the cotton of her pants.

“Can take the chair,” he says roughly.If you’re afraid of me.

“If you’d prefer that.” She looks down as she speaks, her voice expressionless. He exhales loudly, irritably.

“Ain’t here for me.”

She drops the comforter and turns at last, tangling her fingers in front of her, her elbows jutting outwards. Her eyes are huge and anxious.

“I didn’t dream again last night,” she tells him. “After the—the bad one, I slept well. Islept.” She sways slightly towards him and seems to catch herself, straightening her shoulders. “If you’re comfortable sharing with me, I would—I would prefer that.” Her cheeks turn pink. “But of course the chair is fine.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, but climbs into bed, scooting to the wall side and lying on her back, her hands folded on top of the covers. He stares at his feet for second longer and then goes to join her. The sheets are cool, the smell of citrus stronger when he is near her. He lies on his side, facing away from her, trying not to think about the glide of lotion over her skin.

She speaks once more before either of them sleeps, her voice distant and drowsy, drifting over the bed like smoke and fading into the gloom. He isn’t even sure she is talking to him.

“Ed always said—” She sighs. “Ed always said I would never get away from him. And in a way, I think he was right.”

Daryl looks at her over his shoulder. Her profile is fuzzy, her eyes closed.

“I’ll always belong to him, you know? Even when the dreams are gone. He made sure of that.”

Rolling onto his back, Daryl frowns at her. “He’sdead. You ain’t his. Never f*ckin’ were, no matter what he told you.”

She doesn’t look at him, and she doesn’t respond, and he wonders what she means—whether it is the scars he thought about last night, or the fear that inhabits her, or something else, something Daryl doesn’t yet understand. He shuts his eyes and listens to her breathe. And when the bedclothes rustle, he moves his hand to the middle of the bed without opening his eyes, and he falls asleep with her knuckles brushing his.

The others have spoken numerous times about how safe they feel in the bunker, and Daryl is perhaps alone among them in staying as alert down here as he would be aboveground. It is a habit ingrained in him from childhood, the consequence of having a father given to drunken rages at unpredictable hours.

When the bedroom door opens in the middle of the night, Carol is fast asleep. Daryl wakes at the click of the handle as it turns, and draws his knife in the same instant, conscious, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his wrist is warm, that Carol, curled on her side, has one arm outstretched and was holding his while they slept. He is on his feet as the door opens, his weapon lifted, and when Sophia sees him, she gives a soft cry and stumbles backwards.

He sheathes the knife as fast as he drew it, his temples throbbing and his vision blurring for a second as his adrenalin peaks.

“Soph,” he says in a rasping whisper. “‘sh*t. Sorry. I thought—”Edwas what he thought, but he cannot say it, cannot admit to being afraid of ghosts. The girl’s back is up against the wall opposite the bedroom doorway, her face white, her hair a pale cloud. “I’m sorry. f*ck.” He blinks and sees Carol as she was last night, her hands raised, her face terrified. Blinks again, and Sophia is staring at him.

“Where’s Mama?” Her voice is surprisingly loud, though it quavers. He steps back, and gestures towards the bed.

“She’s asleep. She’s fine, Soph.”

The girl hugs herself, and walks into the room, stopping abruptly as she approaches the bed. Too late, Daryl sees what has caught her attention: the dent in his pillow, the comforter thrown aside, the imprint of his body in the sheet. And Carol, her hand awaiting his, her face soft with sleep, her tank top twisted and the swell of her breasts spilling against the neckline. She stirs, rolling onto her back, her arms bracketing her face. Even in the low light, he can see the shadow of the fuzz in her armpit. His mouth goes dry.

“Mama?” The syllables are jagged. Sophia’s knees buckle, and she seems to lift herself back up, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers gripping her upper arms.

“Daryl?” Carol’s voice is drowsy and bewildered. Her daughter turns to him, her eyes snapping with rage.

“You’d said you’d check on her,” she says loudly. Carol sits up, rubbing her eyes. “You said you’dsitwith her. Not—not—” Sophia looks devastated for a moment, her face contorting with misery, and Daryl shrinks from her, remembering the way Carol writhed beneath him last night, the ache in his co*ck as he held her down. There is movement from the bed, but he does not look. The room cannot contain both his desire and Sophia’s dismay.

The door closes. He blinks. Carol, her fingers sliding from the handle, stands behind her daughter.

“Honey? What happened? What’s wrong?”

“What did you do to her?” The child ignores her mother, her voice rising, and Daryl steps back once more, swallowing convulsively, language lost to him. “What did youdo?”

“Sophia!” Carol moves past the girl and turns to face her, seizing her by the elbows. “Daryl didn’t do anything!”

The child turns her face towards the bed, her shoulders heaving, and Carol follows her gaze.

“Oh baby.” The woman’s voice cracks. “Oh Sophia. Look at me. Look at me.” The girl obeys, her eyes dark and appalled, and Carol brings her face level with her daughter’s. “I asked Daryl to sleep near me. That’s all. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t touch—He’s not—He wouldneverhurt me.”

Sophia covers her face and shakes, silently, tears leaking through her fingers. As Carol enfolds her in a hug, Daryl turns away from them, bumping the dresser as he does so, desperate to escape. Carol flinches at the sound, tightening her hold on the child, and he moves towards the door, wretched with shame.

“Daryl.”

He stops, his hand a breath from the doorknob, but doesn’t turn around.

“This is about Ed. Not you,” Carol says hoarsely. “You did nothing wrong.”

He thinks of the nights he spent sitting with Sophia as they listened to Ed with his wife, the care with which Carol would hold herself the next morning, the way she limped, sometimes, her face shuttered. And he remembers hearing his mother beg his father to stop, her pleas mingling with his grunts.

“‘S okay,” he says. A crescent of lamplight is caught in the curve of the doorknob. The floorboards beneath his feet are smooth and cold, the rug’s fringe brushing his heels.He would never hurt me. And yet he watched her on her knees before her husband and wanted her. Lay atop her as she wept and wanted her. Wants her fiercely even now, even in this moment, as she comforts her frightened child.

He opens the door and leaves. As he closes it, Carol is speaking, but no longer to him. Her voice is soft and so stricken with sorrow that his chest aches.I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.

Chapter 22

Chapter Text

The Savannah Mall has a curved glass roof, its panes dull with dirt, the sunlight sifted through dust and grime. Standing just inside the main entrance, staring up through the double-volume space, Daryl thinks, incongruously, of the basem*nt where he found Sophia: its filthy windows and muted light, the stink of stagnant water. He left this morning for the run before she and Carol had emerged from their room, hurrying the others to make sure he didn’t have to see either mother or daughter before he departed. T-Dog was more than happy to swap out and stay behind so Daryl could join Rick, Shane and Glenn.What did you do?What did you do to her?Everything between that basem*nt and this moment was altered by those words.

The stores on the second level of the mall run along its sides, the walkway secured with a white cast iron railing. In the centre of the ground floor stands a carousel, the column in the middle mirrored and ornate, the roof from which the rides hang painted antique gold and turquoise. Where threads of light find their way down through the glass ceiling, the carousel gleams, the bridles of the white horses made of leather and steel, the saddles inlaid with blue rhinestones. Its faded grandeur is interrupted by a banner strung above it, hanging between the walkways on either side of the mall.

“Savannah Film Festival,” reads Rick, and Shane kicks over a life-size cardboard cutout of Charlie Chaplin which—along with Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchco*ck—greeted them at the door. At the sound of voices, a walker wanders out of the nearest store, a tiny place selling cellphone and computer accessories. Daryl fires a bolt into its forehead as it approaches, resting a boot on its cheek as he yanks the arrow free. The walker is a man in an oversizedJawsT-shirt, his hair in a dark crewcut, a red, silicone “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet around one wrist.

“Too late to be askin’ that,” Daryl mutters, and wipes the bolt clean on the walker’s jeans. The display windows of all the stores he can see from here advertise the Film Festival with identical posters, and black-and-white bunting hangs above every door. The mall, according to their research, contains multiple clothing outlets, a Babies “R” Us, a Bass Pro Shop, and a Target, which should cover most of the items on their list.

“It’s hella quiet.” Shane glances back at the parking lot. They left the Chevy truck next to a tour bus, hidden from the road. The lot is perhaps half full, and at the exit, the boom is broken in half, the ends splintered, four cars at odd angles blocking the way out.

“Still,” says Rick. “We stick together, we go carefully. Come on.”

They follow him down the row of stores, towards the carousel. Here and there are bodies, corpses put down by earlier looters, and the tiles are scattered with abandoned belongings: a cotton Disney World tote, a sneaker, a wheelchair tipped onto its side, one of the wheels mangled. Paper litters the ground around the carousel, small cardboard tickets and glossy leaflets promoting the festival. The men’s footsteps seem loud, Daryl’s limp out of time with the others. He takes the rear, turning every few seconds to make sure they are not being followed.

Rick leads them into an Old Navy. The light diminishes as they move cautiously between the tables displaying jeans in every shade of blue, some of the piles toppled to the ground.

“Looks like it’s clear,” Shane says, stopping between a pair of shelves beside the body of a woman. On her T-shirt is a badge that bears the store name along with her own:Christa. Half her face is missing, and an engagement ring glints on her left hand as Shane heaves her out the way.

“Might be another in the back,” Glenn declares darkly. “Or a whole sh*t ton of them like in that military supply place where Daryl got stuck.”

“Look at the list and pick a section of the store,” Rick tells them, sliding an empty duffel bag off his shoulder. “If we’re quick enough we can get home tonight.”

They split up. Daryl is the last to peer down at the list by the light of his flashlight. The only section of the store left unoccupied is men’s underwear, so he skims the sizes required and plods over to the racks of briefs, boxers and trunks. The task is eye-opening: he’s never contemplated anything except the same brand of boxers he’s bought every year since he was fourteen. The sheer variety on display—even with the store clearly having been looted previously—is an education.

His hands full of fresh, soft cotton, the slip of Lycra, he starts back to the middle of the store, slowing when he hears Shane snigg*ring, a snort from Glenn. Limping in their direction, Daryl directs his flashlight onto them. They are in the women’s underwear section, Shane’s flashlight tucked under one arm as he holds up two bras.

“This is definitely Andrea,” he says to Glenn, and waves the bra in his right hand, a shiny, lacy red garment the mere sight of which flusters Daryl.

“And that one?” Glenn splutters with laughter as Shane holds the other bra against his chest. It is beige, the elastics sturdy, the fabric an unappealing, thick cotton; it is ugly, thinks Daryl, made to restrain and conceal.

“Oh this is one hundred percent Carol.” Shane makes a plaintive expression and thrusts one hip out in a mocking feminine pose. Glenn’s guffaw is abruptly cut off as he notices Daryl watching them.

“f*ckin’ asshole,” the hunter snaps at Shane, who smirks at him.

“What’re you doin’ over here?” the cop asks. “Fillin’ up the spank bank?”

Daryl starts forward, and Glenn steps between them, holding his hands up. In one, he is holding three black bras.

“Woah woah.” He looks nervously at Daryl, and Shane tosses the beige bra at the hunter over Glenn’s shoulder. It hits his chest and he recoils, prompting a bark of laughter from the cop.

“You pick some for Carol then,” Shane sneers at Daryl, and leaves him with Glenn, taking the red bra and a stack of panties to the duffel bag. Glenn grimaces apologetically and hastens after him.

The bra at Daryl’s feet feels exactly the way it looks: robust and uncomfortable. He searches on it for a size, finally finding the number and letter on the label, and frowns as he commits them to memory. Dropping the bra, he looks at the racks in front of him and steels himself. He does not want to choose underwear for Carol, does not want to know what she is wearing beneath her clothes, does not want to imagine her breasts and ass in these snug, luxurious garments. But neither does he want Shane, of all people, to be responsible for the task.

He ignores the hot pink moulded cups, the diamanté-edged push-up bras, the peculiar maternity bras with their extra clips and pockets. He finds a rack of white satin bras, their edges scalloped with lace, and takes two in Carol’s size. Behind them is a collection of bras in a silvery blue shade, the cups sewn entirely of soft, elastic lace, and he takes a couple of those before he can overthink it. And then, as he turns away, sweat trickling down his spine and his fingers damp on the fabric, he sees a display of deep red underwear; not the bright, brash red of the bra Shane held, but a darker, more sombre shade, the bras cut low in the middle, the edges ruffled with fine black satin. They are beautiful, elegant in a way he does not expect from underwear, in a way that reminds him of Carol. He rocks on the balls of his feet, half hard suddenly and furious at the accuracy of Shane’s remark to him. And then he lunges forward and finds the right size with shaking fingers, snatching up some panties at the same time.

xxxx

Carol doesn’t move from her bed that morning until she hears Lori’s voice in the hallway, talking to Carl. When the Peletiers’ door opens, the brunette smiles a greeting.

“I thought you’d be up already,” she says.

Carol returns her smile tiredly. “Sophia’s still sleeping, and I didn’t want—I don’t want to wake her or leave her.”

Lori frowns. “She okay? She seemed fine when she said she wanted to go and sleep with you in the night.” She shrugs ruefully. “Although I admit I was only half awake.”

“She’s fine.” Carol glances at Carl, and back at his mother. “Could you tell the others there’s leftover venison and bread for breakfast? Or canned fruit.”

Lori nods. “There aren’t many of us anyway. Rick and the others left for the run while it was dark.”

“Thanks.” She pats Carl’s arm before ducking back into her room and clicking the door shut. She has a headache, an insistent, scratchy-eyed thrum from her fitful night. She slept in brief bursts that ended in fright, waking over and over with her heart racing and her face wet. Sophia was roused only once by her mother’s distress and clung to her in wordless comfort. All night after he left, Carol longed for Daryl: his weight on the mattress, the scarred skin of his knuckles under her fingertips, the twitches and soft grunts of his sleep.

Sophia is watching her when she turns from the door, the child’s eyes puffy from last night’s crying, her expression guarded. Head on Daryl’s pillow, she is huddled on her side. Carol goes to sit on the edge of the bed, and strokes back her daughter’s hair, easing out a knot with careful fingers. They didn’t have a proper conversation after Daryl left—Sophia fell asleep still sniffing in Carol’s arms. Now, the girl moves her head to avoid her mother’s touch, and Carol meets her eyes reluctantly.

“Why would you—” The girl stops. Last night’s shock and misery have been replaced by a coldness that Carol has seen in her daughter only occasionally. “Daddy only just died. Why would you want that again?”

Carol folds her hands in her lap, and looks down for a moment, choosing her words.

“I hadn’t loved him for a long time when he died, Sophia,” she says quietly. “I don’t mourn him.” She lifts her eyes. “Daryl is a friend. He’s strong and—and brave, and having him sleep here, it helps.”

“What if he—” The child’s breath hiccups. “What if he wants to—to—” Her eyes, bright with anger, well up. “He’s bigger than you.”

Carol bites the inside of her cheek, swallowing salt, and knots her fingers together.

“Yes, he is. Bigger and stronger.” She thinks of the ease with which he pinned her arms beside her head two nights ago. “But he’s never used that strength to do anything except protect us, Soph. You and me.” She feels anger of her own stirring, at the injustice of having to have this conversation at all. “Men aren’t animals, sweetheart. They choose how they want to—to treat people. Theychoose.”

Sophia’s face scrunches in confusion, a tear leaking from the corner of one eye.

“I don’t understand.”

“Your—Ed wanted to hurt me and he did.” The words are raw, the air between them shivering with tension. “But some men—other men—are kind to their wives. To women. Gentle.” She clears her throat. “Daryl and I aren’t—he’s not interested in, in doing anything except be my friend.” She blinks past a fleeting memory of his erection against her leg.A reflex. “And I’m not afraid of him. Not for a single second.”

The girl stares at her, her brow creased, the weight of her thoughts dragging at Carol’s edges, drawing her tighter and tighter. At last, she rests a tentative hand on Sophia’s waist. The child stiffens but doesn’t shrug her off.

“I wish your life before the turn had been different,” Carol whispers. “I wish I’d been braver and smarter, Sophia. I’m sorry.”

Sophia’s face contorts, and she lifts a fist to rub her eyes.

“I was scared he’d kill you,” she whispers back, each syllable a tiny gasp. “And I’d be alone with him.”

“I know.” Carol’s throat throbs with the effort of keeping her voice calm. “I was scared of that too, sweetheart.”

Sophia squirms under the comforter, pulling herself upright, and puts her arms around Carol. The woman holds her, tipping her head back, waiting for the crushing grief in her chest to subside, to seep back into the deeper places in her body where it belongs. She lives, when she allows herself to think of it, between the conviction that she allowed her child to be broken, and an unrelenting horror that she should see Sophia as anything but whole and perfect. She does not know how to accommodate the plainness of her love for the child with all the nuances of her guilt.

The girl sniffs, and nestles her cheek against Carol, relaxing gradually as her mother rubs her back. After a while, she stirs in Carol’s arms.

“Daryl must be mad at me.” Sophia sounds like she is about to cry again, and Carol bends and kisses the top of her head.

“I don’t think he’s angry with you, Sophia.” She closes her eyes as she thinks of his face as he left the room last night, shame etched into his entire form, his body hunched and graceless. “Just…sad, maybe.” She sighs against the child’s hair. “He’ll be okay.”

“I’ll try and explain.” Sophia sits back, her face ruddy with crying. “Do you think he’ll talk to me?” Her bottom lip quivers, and Carol tucks a strand of blonde hair behind the girl’s ear, stroking her cheek as she does so.

“I think he will, sweetheart.” She smiles unsteadily. “I think he’ll understand.”

xxxx

They only end up at the movie theatre concession stand because they have had such luck up to that point, and they have time to spare, a false confidence in the ease of this venture. Their bags laden with loot, Glenn nonchalantly eating gherkin slices straight out of a jar from Target, they wander over to the far end of the mall’s ground floor, where the building’s architecture bulges and extends into three movie theatres. A display of vintage movie cameras takes pride of place on the faded red carpet in front of the ticket booths, squat tripods and cracked leather cases, lenses furry with dust.

But they are here for the candy—one shelf full of it, though the other two are almost empty. The smell of sugar and artificial flavouring is so strong that Daryl can taste the sweetness of the stagnant slushies in the machine, their colours murky with age, black mould patterning the tanks like frost on a windowpane. The popcorn machine has been emptied, only shrivelled, greyish kernels remaining in the bottom.

Daryl snags a few bags of Hershey’s Kisses and one of milk duds, and leaves the rest to the others, retreating to a black, cast iron bench which seems to be part of the Film Festival display. One end is occupied by a mannequin in a tuxedo, its head co*cked to one side, its top hat on the floor a few feet away. Daryl takes the other end and lights up, allowing the bench to bear the weight of his pack for a while and give his shoulders a break. His wounded thigh aches. The tobacco mutes the sickly stench of the slushies, and Daryl leans forward, elbows on his knees, keeping his face close to the smoke. He doesn’t even like chocolate that much—doesn’t have a sweet tooth. But the others might like the candy he’s zipped in a side pocket. Carol. Sophia, maybe.

Sighing, he rubs a hand across his face. The run has gone so smoothly that they will be back at the bunker by nightfall, and he will have to figure out how much damage has been done, how much distance to keep between himself and the girl. He cannot reassure her, not when she is right about him, not when she understands what Carol doesn’t: that he wants her just as much as her husband did, with a need as violent in extent if not in nature.

Rick and Shane are still at the concession stand, chatting idly as they pass a bag of Skittles back and forth. Glenn, empty pickle jar abandoned on the counter, is crunching a final mouthful and moving towards the theatre doors. He made a beeline for the condoms and lubricant in Target, much to Shane’s loud amusem*nt, but the cop joined him almost immediately and pocketed a few boxes himself. Daryl takes a drag and looks down at the carpet under his feet. There is blood on his boots from the handful of stray walkers he killed during their progress through the mall.

A rattle draws his attention back to Glenn, who has reached the double doors to one of the theatres. Stuck through the handles, effectively keeping the doors shut, is a long-handled metal dustpan, which Glenn is pulling free.

“Hey!” Daryl says, and Shane and Rick follow his gaze. “Whatcha doin’?”

Glenn grunts loudly as he successfully liberates the dustpan from the handles.

“Looks useful,” he calls, and hefts the implement in one hand, the pan in the air, swinging it like a sword as he turns to the others, grinning. Daryl gets slowly to his feet, the back of his neck prickling, and Glenn’s smile fades in the same instant as the sound begins, so faint at first that it seems like nothing more than a tiny gust of wind through the building.

“sh*t.” Daryl lifts his crossbow and Glenn swivels to face the doors as they creak open, pushed by a mass of the dead thronging forward. The noise grows, resolving into growling and snarling, walkers tripping as they stumble over each other, the fallen corpses of the first ones keeping the doors open. Rick fires, blood spraying from the forehead of a short, plump woman in a velour tracksuit. Glenn is using the dustpan to hack down the dead as they reach him, but they scramble to their feet as he retreats, the pan edge failing to penetrate their skulls. Taking out two of them in rapid succession with his bow, Daryl limps forward as quickly as he can, retrieving the bolts and stabbing a towering man with fine, beaded dreadlocks in the temple as he makes his way to Glenn.

“C’mon!” He grabs the younger man’s arm and tugs him backwards. “Too many of ‘em.”

“Over here!”

Daryl turns towards Shane’s voice, dodging the clawing hand of a teenage girl, her wrist full of friendship bracelets. The cop is at the entrance to one of the other theatres.

“It’s empty!” Shane lifts his gun and takes out a walker to Daryl’s right, brain matter splattering the hunter’s arm and hand. “f*ckin’ hurry up!”

Hoisting his pack so it is more securely on his shoulder, Daryl glances back to make sure Glenn is with him, and heads for the open doors. Rick and Shane stand like sentries on either side, shooting walkers as they get closer, and Daryl is grateful for the grip of the red carpet as it grows soggy with blood; a smoother surface would be slippery beneath his feet. Glenn slips past him as they near the other men, and Daryl spins to cover him, staggering as he meets an oncoming corpse with an upraised knife, allowing it to sink its own forehead onto the blade as it lunges for him. A hand—a human hand, warm and firm—closes on his shoulder as a little girl lurches towards him, quicker than the bigger walkers around her, her blonde hair in a bob and her eyes a dull blue as she scrapes chewed fingernails down his jeans. Her delicate jaw snaps as she looks up at him.Sophia.

The hand on his shoulder drags him into darkness and the doors bang shut, the dustpan scraping through the handles as Rick secures them. The theatre interior is cool and musty, the screen, when Daryl turns to face it, a rectangular grey mirage in the darkness.

“Why the hell’d you open the goddamn doors?” Shane says to Glenn, his voice savage.

“I thought the—the—thought the, uh, dustpan would be useful.”

“Yeah, to whoever used it to lock those f*ckers inside,” the cop replies bitterly. “Jesus. Bein’ that dumb should be a crime.”

“We’re fine,” Rick says. “Right? Nobody bit? Scratched?”

There is a pause as everyone takes stock of themselves.

“Good. We wait in here until they disperse.”

“Ifthey disperse. Ain’t like anythin’ else in this place is gonna lure them away.” Shane moves deeper into the theatre and flops down into one of the seats. “So much for gettin’ back tonight.”

xxxx

She doesn’t realise Daryl is gone until T-Dog comes to find her above ground, where she is hanging last night’s load of laundry on the backs of the solar panels, taking advantage of the sunshine. Dale, technically keeping watch, is examining the motor for the gates, and though he lifts a hand in greeting when she emerges from the bunker, he doesn’t approach her, preoccupied by his task. It is early morning still; she has come here straight from Sophia, not even stopping in the kitchen. Truly warm days are getting fewer, and she prefers to avoid wasting solar power on the dryer.

“You had coffee yet?”

She looks up in surprise, a wet shirt in her hands, T-Dog grinning as he holds out a mug.

“I—no, not yet. Thank you.” She drops the shirt back into the basket and takes the drink, frowning. “I thought you were on the run.”

“Swapped out,” he says. She clasps the mug in both hands, its heat a small pleasure. “Daryl wanted to go.”

She stares at him, and then realises she has to respond.

“Oh.” Her throat is dry, and she gulps a mouthful of coffee. T-Dog is watching her intently, but his interest does not seem to be in her reaction to the news. His eyes linger on her mouth. She thinks of what Andrea said yesterday and looks away quickly.

“T!” Beyond the entrance building, Dale straightens up, waving a hand. “Can I get an opinion on something over here?”

A flicker of irritation crosses T-Dog’s face, but he waves back and smiles at Carol.

“Catch up with you in a bit,” he says. “Maybe we can eat lunch together.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” she says, ignoring the invitation, turning away from the men as T-Dog walks off. She didn’t even ask why Daryl had suddenly wanted to go on the run. Whatever he told T-Dog, she knows the real reason.

She keeps to herself for most of the day after she finds out Daryl has gone, nursing an anxiety so great that she is angry with herself for indulging it. He is not achild, she tells herself. He is not weak or inept or helpless. Lori, whosehusbandis with Daryl, goes about her day with little to no indication of concern for Rick’s safety, and Andrea repeatedly declares that she is enjoying the reduced testosterone levels in the bunker. All Carol can think about is Daryl’s limp, the blood on his neck when he walked out of the Drop Zone, the look on his face as Sophia accused him of hurting her mother.

The girl yawns all day after her disturbed night, but though her mood is somewhat subdued, she finds a measure of comfort, it seems to Carol, in Carl’s company. They do schoolwork for a while, distracting each other in their boredom, and then they go to the living room and play games, table tennis matches that end in laughter more often than they do in arguments. Carol brings them lunch there and sits with them, relieved when T-Dog doesn’t find her.

Sophia says nothing about Daryl’s absence until after dinner, though Carol is certain she is aware of it. Fresh from the shower, the child comes to find her mother in the kitchen, where Carol is packing away clean dishes. She smiles at Sophia and puts down the stack of bowls in her hands, drawing her daughter against her side in a half-hug.

“Ready for bed?” she asks. Sophia nods, but there is a troubled air about her, her head bent, her hands toying with the hem of her pyjama top. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“When will Daryl be back?” The girl’s head is damp through the shirt Carol is wearing, her shoulders sharp.

“Any time now,” Carol says briskly. “Come. When you wake up tomorrow, he’ll—they’ll all be here.”

She steers her daughter towards the spiral stairs, but Sophia resists when they reach the bottom, pulling away and looking up at her mother. Carl’s voice comes from the floor above.

“Hurryup, Sophia, Mom said one game before bed.”

The girl’s cheeks turn pink, and she peers guiltily at Carol.

“You want to sleep with Lori and Carl?” the woman asks gently. Sophia nods. “That’s fine, honey.”

“You’ll be on your own,” the child whispers. Carol shakes her head, waiting until she is sure she has control of her voice.

“You know what, I’m going to stay up and wait for Rick and Daryl and the others.” She smiles to match the forced brightness of her tone, a stiff, effortful motion of her face. “I’m sure they’ll be hungry when they get back, and I can whip them up something to eat.”

Sophia studies Carol, a crease between her brows, her teeth worrying her lower lip. Carol combs the damp strands of hair back from her daughter’s temple and kisses her hairline.

“I’m not your responsibility, or Daryl’s,” she murmurs against the child’s skin, and sighs, Sophia’s hair tickling her nose. “And I want you to try not to worry about me so much. Okay?”

She rests a hand on Sophia’s shoulder and straightens up, meeting her daughter’s gaze. The girl is still frowning uncertainly.

“Daryl will—he’ll stay with you again?” Sophia asks slowly, her colour deepening. Carol nods, her own face growing hot.

“If he doesn’t mind, and if you—if it won’t make you anxious—yes.”

“I won’t worry.” There is a determined note in the soft words. “If he’s with you, I won’t worry, Mama.” The determination wavers, and Carol squeezes her daughter’s shoulder.

“Good,” she says quietly. “Remember, sweetheart, he’s exactly who he’s shown himself to be. Not—he’s not Ed. He’s our friend.”

Sophia nods rapidly, and gives Carol a quick, fierce hug, holding on a moment longer than necessary before she goes upstairs. Carol listens to the children’s voices fade towards the bedrooms. In the silence that follows, never complete down here because of the hum of the fans, she listens a little longer: for the grinding of the front door, the thud of bags on the floor, the gravelly timbre of Daryl’s voice.

Near midnight, the kitchen long tidy, her thighs numb from sitting on a wooden chair, she goes upstairs. T-Dog’s shift on watch will soon end, and she doesn’t want to see him. Daryl will not be back tonight. It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself, anything other than that some minor inconvenience held them up. A flat tyre, a blocked road. They are cautious, and they have found somewhere safe to spend the night, and fretting like she is, her heart staccato in her throat, her hands sweaty, is pointless.

She doesn’t stop at her room, walking past it and on to Daryl’s door. It is closed, but not locked, and she slips inside, briefly panicked by the depth of the darkness as she shuts the door behind her. She fumbles for the light switch. The room is neater than it was yesterday, but the bed has been slept in, the comforter pushed to the bottom, the pillow crooked and dented. From the handle of a drawer in the dresser hangs Daryl’s vest, scrubbed and left to dry in the cool of underground, where the sun can’t damage the damp leather. His crossbow is gone. His knives and pack are gone.

She does not mean to stay, only to visit. But as soon as she sits on the edge of the bed, she knows she won’t leave tonight. The sheets smell like cigarette smoke and forest, and the tang of his sweat is in the pillow when she lies down. Pulling the comforter to her chin, she waits for the linen to grow warm from her body, for the scent of Daryl to be joined by a heat she can pretend is from his presence beside her.

Chapter 23

Chapter Text

Daryl’s appreciation for the ventilation system in the bunker grows with every moment they spend in the dark movie theatre. The velvet seats and black-and-grey diamond-patterned rug smell musty, and the air grows staler as time passes. On the floor between the rows of seats, and up the aisle, are traces of the stampede that must have taken place when the turn happened: lost shoes and handbags, a dropped My Little Pony. Glenn has been peering morosely into bags since they resigned themselves to waiting here, his flashlight a bright spot hovering near the front row.

“Wastin’ the damn batteries in that thing,” Shane drawls. He is in a seat in the middle of the theatre, slouching low, his ankles crossed on the back of the chair in front of him.

“I found gum, tampons, lip balm, three lighters, and a bag of weed,” Glenn retorts. He has regained his spirits somewhat since his dressing-down from the cop, and Daryl is secretly glad to hear him stand up to Shane. “Gonna use hundred-dollar bills to roll it.” He directs the flashlight onto his face and holds up a sheaf of crumpled banknotes.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Rick’s voice is clipped. He is leaning against the wall beside the doors, listening, Daryl assumes, for a lull in the noise from outside.

“I don’t mean now,” Glenn says. “I mean when we get back. Me and Maggie.” Daryl can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m not wasting good weed.”

“Bet old Hershel would love to join you.” Shane snigg*rs and turns his head to peer in Rick’s direction. “They still out there?”

“Uh huh,” the deputy replies grimly. “They’re goin’ nowhere.”

Daryl, sitting halfway down the steps in the centre aisle, his bad leg extended, clicks his lighter and watches the flame flicker and then grow still. He wants to smoke but doesn’t want the hassle of arguing with the others should they object.

“Fire escape an’ fight,” he says. It has been his choice from the start. The fire escape door beside the screen will bring them out behind the concession stand—just metres from the double theatre doors, but fractionally closer to ultimate freedom, and away from the bulk of the walkers, who seem to be clustered at the main doors.

“Doesn’t look to me like you can run on that leg,” Rick says reasonably.

“You’re a goddamn handicap to the rest of us, is what he’s tryna say.” Shane’s boots thud on the floor, his seat squeaking as he stands up. “Shoulda brought T-Dog.”

The lighter winks out, and Daryl scowls into the darkness, the glowing white afterimage of the flame hovering before him. It must be one o’clock, maybe later. He wonders whether Carol is dreaming, whether Sophia is lying beside her, afraid because her mother is crying in her sleep.

“Didn’t suggest this earlier ‘cause it seemed unnecessarily risky,” Glenn says slowly. “But how ‘bout that trick we used in Atlanta, Rick?”

“Trick?” Rick sounds puzzled. “Hang on, you mean…?”

“The, uh, the guts. Yeah.”

“Whaddya mean, guts?” Shane asks sharply.

“We cut open a body and me and Rick covered ourselves in…guts.” Glenn’s flashlight moves erratically for a moment as he puts down the bag he’s examining and starts up the steps of the middle aisle. “Walked right through a crowd of the dead. They couldn’t smell us.”

“Yeah, until it rained and they could,” Rick says.

“It’s not gonna rain inside the mall.” Glenn reaches Daryl, who squints up at him.

“It worked?” the hunter asks. He likes this idea, the way it confirms that the walkers are dumb, instinctive creatures, not even as smart as most dogs. Glenn nods.

“We never got to mentionin’ it ‘cause when we got to the quarry, there was Lori an’ Carl.” Rick pauses. “Shane. An’ we had to deal with tellin’ you about Merle.”

Daryl snorts, a wave of the old anger washing over him, at Rick and T-Dog and Merle himself, who had so little faith in his brother that he cut off his own hand rather than count on Daryl to come get him.

“You put guts on and what, walked through the dead like it was nothin’?” Shane gives a low whistle. “That’s some crazy sh*t.”

“It worked.” Glenn is warming to his theme. “We could sit here for days without them moving on.”

Daryl gets to his feet.

“He’s right.” The sound of Carol fighting for air, the frantic scrape of her nails against the wall. He cannot sit here any longer. “We gotta try it.”

“You realise that if it doesn’t work, we die?” Shane addresses this to Rick, ignoring Daryl. Daryl bristles.

“Or we f*ckin’ fight through them,” he snarls. “‘Less you’re goin’ soft?”

The cop turns, his expression unreadable in the gloom, his eyes gleaming.

“There’s a difference between soft an’ smart, you hillbilly fool,” he spits, and Daryl starts up the stairs to the back of the theatre, squeezing his way behind the row of seats towards the door. “C’mon then, asshole. Come an’ see how soft I am.”

“Jesus, stop arguin’ for a second!” The deputy moves between the two men. “Shane, we’re gonna be out of water before they move on unless another group turns up an’ distracts them. An’ that’s a whole other problem. Right?”

Shane stares at his friend, his face hard, and Daryl waits behind Rick, his body rigid, his fingers flexing at his sides. At last, the cop exhales loudly.

“Fine. But it’s every man for him f*ckin’ self out there.” He sneers at Daryl over Rick’s shoulder.

“Ain’t it always?” Daryl snaps at him, and draws his knife, enjoying the alarm on Rick’s face as he does so. He jerks his head at the double doors. “Open up so I can get one to gut.”

xxxx

She wakes up from a dream, and though she is breathing quickly, it is not a nightmare. The pillow beneath her cheek is hot, and when she rolls onto her back, her T-shirt pulls across her breasts and her breath catches. Her nipples are hard and sensitive, her thighs clamped together. Her abdomen throbs and aches with a need she barely recognises, and she is wet, her body doing what she didn’t know it was capable of any longer.

Her arousal is mortifying, its cause unclear, a mockery in this body, at this time in her life. The details of the dream are lost, and the electric feeling between her legs and in her nipples dies almost instantly, leaving her with slick, damp panties and Ed’s voice in her ear: queen of the whor*s. She remembers him fingering her in his car on a date, his disgust when she grew wet, the way he scraped his nails over the soft tissue between her legs as punishment.

She opens her eyes, shielding them with one hand from the light she left on in Daryl’s room. It must be after midnight, although it is hard to tell underground. She relies more and more on her circadian rhythms. Whatever the hour, she knows instantly that she is alone. The men are not back yet.

xxxx

Daryl is used to the stench of the dead, to the rotten stink of blood on his skin and clothes. But deliberately covering himself in gore—rubbing intestines over his shirt until his skin is damp, smearing handfuls of disintegrating flesh over his arms—is freshly appalling to him. Glenn throws up in a far corner of the movie theatre, and the other men, despite gritted teeth, all gag once or twice as they complete their camouflage.

One corpse is not enough, and Daryl goes for a second walker once they have hollowed out the belly of an old woman, the wrinkled skin of her face grey and fragile as paper. The second walker he snags is a man, clearly a gym enthusiast, his abdominal muscles offering more resistance to the buck knife than Daryl anticipates.

They work in silence, both out of respect for the dead whose bodies they are using, and out of discomfort—the awkwardness of moral people conspiring in something clearly immoral. Daryl finds himself thinking of Sophia as he scoops flesh, how disgusted she would be by him in this moment, just like she was last night. What did you do to her?

They gather at the fire escape door when they are done, their faces the colour of clay, their canvas packs stiff and dark with blood and secured on their backs.

“Shane, you got the keys to the truck?” Rick asks. The cop pulls them out his pocket, dangling them where the others can see them. “Right. Ready?”

He doesn’t wait for them to reply but pushes the emergency exit door and leads them into a concrete corridor, once lit by fluorescent tube lights. A couple of the tubes hang from the ceiling by their wires. Only Rick is using a flashlight, and at the back, where Daryl walks, there is little to guide him but the sound of Glenn’s breathing up ahead, the scrape of boots on the gritty floor. When the group halts suddenly, Daryl knows they’ve reached the door behind the concession stand. Rick’s light clicks off, and Glenn mutters something that sounds like a prayer, and then the corridor lightens to a soft grey as a trickle of moonlight seeps in.

The dead fill the movie theatre foyer, moving like slowed-down particles under a microscope. The men spread out as they exit the corridor, as they planned: it is safer to advance with some distance between them. Every man for him f*ckin’ self. Daryl’s eyes strain to find a pattern in the aimless wandering of the walkers, something he can mimic or use to avoid them. But there is none, and as he walks slowly around the snack counter, a woman with a shaved head and a nose ring bumps into him, yellowed, unseeing eyes inches from his when he turns his head. She lurches away from him, disinterested, and he swallows an acid fear, his throat burning.

He doesn’t bother looking for the others as he inches his way across the red carpet, his eyes lowered, his steps agonisingly slow. Move too fast an’ they’ll notice you. Every instinct tells him to run. Sweat beads on his brow as he crosses the last stretch of carpet onto the tiles of the central section of the mall. The carousel seems impossibly far away, the main exit concealed from view by the heads of the dead bobbing in the gloom.

He is outside a tobacconist’s store when he realises how the walkers are moving, a narrow shop where, earlier, he found some rolling papers and loose tobacco between the neon glass hookahs and the traditional brass ones, the novelty ashtrays and cigars. He pauses by the window to get a sense of where his companions are, swivelling slowly on his heels, hanging his head as he turns to face the way he came. He spots Shane, slightly behind him on the opposite side of the mall, but there is no sign of Rick or Glenn. More alarmingly, there is a trail of walkers from the movie theatre foyer, their meandering given direction by the four men in their midst. The men are not leaving the dead behind them; they are guiding them towards the main entrance, their movement a current that draws the walkers with them.

Dry-mouthed, Daryl lurches round to face forward again and resumes walking. At night, the temperature in the mall has dropped, but the stuffiness of it is far more striking, the reek of the dead and the odour of rotting food from Target, the musk of tobacco and the faint smell of burnt rubber where wires have shorted. He passes the carousel, a walker losing its footing in the drift of Film Festival flyers, its left arm hanging crookedly as it scrabbles to stand up. Daryl sidesteps it quickly, and suddenly an open mouth yawns in front of him, a skinny youth in a vest and gold chains, his head tilting one way and then the other as he considers Daryl. The hunter keeps moving, bumping the walker gently, his hand sticky with sweat on the handle of his knife, and the boy moans and staggers away.

The air gets cooler and fresher as Daryl nears the main entrance, and it is difficult not to increase the pace at which he is walking. If the dead exit the mall with the men, they will have to coordinate climbing into the truck, because as soon as one of them gets in, it will draw attention to the vehicle. At the fallen Charlie Chaplin cut-out, Daryl peers into the night, the truck a vague shape beside the hulking silhouette of the tour bus. Someone is standing beside it, motionless among the milling walkers. Rick or Shane, Daryl thinks, judging by the height. He limps into the carpark and towards the Chevy.

“Where the f*ck is Glenn?”

The voice at his ear startles him into jerking sideways, almost losing his balance, and there is a groan from one of the dead nearby. Shane glares at him, and Daryl shrugs, furious with the cop.

“Back up,” he hisses at Shane, and plods onwards. He can see Rick’s face now, his eyes scanning the crowd coming out the mall. Shane reaches the vehicle first and sags against it, flattening a palm against the metal in a gesture of relief. When Daryl gets there a moment later, the cop has the keys out his pocket.

“I see him,” Rick mutters, and seizes Shane’s hand to keep him from unlocking the truck. “Over there.”

Daryl turns and squints in the direction in which the deputy is looking. Glenn is twenty or so metres from them, his pack hanging from one arm, his expression terrified even from this distance, in low light. He meets Daryl’s gaze and the hunter sees the second he decides to run, his pack hoisted higher on his shoulder, his eyes darting to the walkers on either side of him.

“sh*t.” Daryl drops his pack as Glenn lunges forward. “Start the truck. He’s makin’ a run for it.”

He draws his knives as Shane opens the car door. Glenn is running awkwardly, his bag thumping against his back, and the dead have noticed him. Daryl stabs the two nearest to the truck and begins to clear a path through the rest, the slick of more blood on his hands barely registering. Behind him, the truck roars to life, and the murmur of the walkers gets louder in response, heads as far away as the mall entrance turning towards the carpark.

As he reaches Glenn, Daryl glances back towards the truck. Rick is outside the vehicle, his gun at the ready, and he fires as Daryl turns.

“Go!” Daryl yells at Glenn. A wall of walkers looms in front of him, and the way to the truck is starting to close. Covering Glenn’s back, he keeps stabbing, dodging hands and mouths, kicking the dead back with his bad leg so he can balance on his good one. One sleeve of his shirt tears beneath the long, manicured nails of an expensively dressed woman, and he plunges both knives into her head before she can scratch his skin. Rick’s gun fires with barely a breath between each shot.

“Let’s go!” The shout is from Glenn, his voice edged with hysteria. “Let’s get the f*ck outta here!”

xxxx

She doesn’t know what has woken her at first: not a nightmare, not a dream like her earlier one. She is stiff with apprehension, unmoving, listening for a clue. The light is still on, and she is still alone in the bed. But there is a barely audible sound from the bathroom, the rustle and slap of wet fabric, a heavy exhale, and her eyes are already filling with tears of relief when she sits up, throwing the comforter off her legs.

The bathroom door is open, perhaps because she was asleep when he came inside, perhaps because he was simply too tired to think of shutting it. And so her relief lasts only a few seconds before it turns to icy shock, because in the brightness reflected off the tiles, in front of the basin, Daryl stands with his back to her, peeling his shirt off, revealing flesh covered in blood, the skin over his shoulders ravaged as though something has clawed at him. Across the middle of his spine is what looks like a deep cut, blood collected in it, odd puckers of flesh holding clots of red over his ribs.

“Daryl. Daryl.” She reaches the threshold of the bathroom as he turns around, his eyes dark with fright, his shirt in one hand. His chest is bloody too, and she reaches out a hand. He steps away from her, grasping the edge of the basin as he favours his bad leg.

“Ain’t hurt.” His voice is rasping, his face lined with weariness beneath traces of dirt and blood, and she doesn’t believe him.

“Your back.” She moves towards him again and he flinches, holding his shirt up to cover his chest. The gesture hurts her, for reasons she doesn’t stop to consider.

“Walker blood,” he says, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. His fingers are a fist around the fabric of the shirt. “Hadda cover our clothes in it to get out the mall.”

“But—the marks, the—”

He flushes, a burning red below the dirt, and she remembers changing the bandage on his side back at the farm, remembers the edge of a scar. She opens her mouth, her voice trapped in her throat.

“They’re old,” Daryl says, and shivers, lifting the shirt higher, though it barely conceals him. “Ain’t hurt.”

But you were, she wants to say. More than I realised when I saw your chest that night. Instead, she covers her mouth with one hand and nods as her tears spill over, taking a step back, trying to allow him the privacy he deserves. His face twists, his eyes suddenly alight with anguish.

“Don’ cry. Don’—we’re all fine. Rick, Glenn, all of us.” The colour in his cheeks deepens. “An’ the rest was—years ago. A damn lifetime ago.”

He moves towards her and then stops, rocking slightly, caught between his pity for her and his natural reticence, and she is not strong enough to do what she knows he would prefer. She knocks him back a step as she puts her arms around him, the hand holding his shirt dropping to his side as he grunts, her face on the bare skin of his chest as her hands press against the sticky corrugation of the scar tissue on his back. He shivers again, and does not lift his arms, his breath quickening. He stinks of death, but she does not care. He is whole and alive; he survived the run and he survived something far worse, that lasted far longer.

“Sorry,” she whispers as she steps back. His eyes drop to her chest above the neck of her T-shirt, where her skin is now smeared with blood, and she peers down at it. “I’ll leave you to clean up. I’ll—go to my room and do the same.”

He looks down, and says nothing, his shoulders rising and falling with each short breath. She turns back at the bedroom door. The fingers of one hand are touching the smudge where her cheek rested, just to the right of his sternum, feeling the spot as though searching for something.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says with difficulty. “Glad you’re okay.”

xxxx

He screws his torn and bloodied shirt into a ball as the door closes behind her and flings it into the trash can below the sink. f*ckin’ idiot. He was so bewitched by the sight of her asleep in his bed, so shaken by the way she held the pillow, the way her lips were slightly parted and her cheeks pink, that he didn’t think to close the bathroom door. His skin was itchy with filth, his gore-soaked shirt clinging to him, and in his distraction, he wanted it off him, her form beneath the comforter swimming before his eyes as he stared at the mirror. He wanted only to be clean enough to sit in the armchair and sleep, knowing she was close by.

She has seen the last of his secrets now, the ugliest. The thought makes him feel hopeless, petulant as a child while he scrubs himself clean in the shower. He did not want her to pity him more than she did already, and he did not want her to know how ruined he was by his father, how extensive the scarring she hadn’t yet seen. Not even Merle knew of it before he disappeared from that rooftop. Now he never will.

It must only be an hour from dawn by the time he is dressed, in sweatpants and a shirt, rubbing his hair tiredly with a towel. The drive back in the truck was at first loud and excited, and then silent, the four men exhausted, eager to get back to the bunker. T-Dog, on watch at the gate, greeted them with high fives and a broad grin, reporting an uneventful day and night. The group parted with barely a word when they entered the heavy door, leaving their packs just inside it. Tomorrow—later today—they will unpack their loot and distribute it. Daryl thinks of the bras in his bag and closes his eyes for a moment, wishing he’d just let Shane choose whatever.

He doesn’t expect her to come back, but she knocks as he is about to climb into bed. She is in a clean grey T-shirt and leggings, and she has a mug of cocoa in one hand, which she holds out to him when he opens the door. He takes it with a nod of thanks and stands aside. She hesitates, and he remembers Sophia’s face when she realised he’d been sleeping next to her mother. He shifts his gaze to the wall behind Carol.

“It’s not that,” Carol blurts out as though she has read his mind. “It’s not—it’s just, I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your room. It was…it was an invasion of your privacy.”

He scowls at the off-white plaster to the left of her head, scuffing his big toe against the floorboards. “Doesn’ matter to me,” he mutters, and slides his eyes back to hers. “Long as you’re sleepin’.”

Her face softens, and after a beat she comes into the room and he closes the door, taking a sip of the cocoa. It is rich and chocolatey, comforting.

“Soph okay?” he asks, examining the liquid in his mug.

“Yes.” Carol sighs quietly. “She’s fine. She’s hoping to talk to you some time when you’re—if you’re willing.”

He shrugs, drinking again to hide how flustered he is at the prospect. He didn’t think the girl would want anything to do with him, given how upset she was. Given what it implied about her opinion of him.

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

He looks up, startled at the soft question, at the fresh anxiety in her face. She tugs at the hem of her shirt the way Sophia does at her own sometimes, and he shakes his head, avoiding looking at the way her breasts move beneath the fabric.

“Ain’t hurt. Ain’t hidin’ anythin’.”

She nods, swallowing, lowering her eyes. “I should go.”

He grips the mug handle tightly, and bites his lower lip, worrying the dry skin with his teeth.

“Can stay if you like.” If he were less tired, less drained, less in need of reassurance after what she saw on his back, he would not have been able to issue the invitation. Once the words are spoken, he takes a gulp of cocoa. When he lowers the mug, she is smiling gently, her mouth pulling down in one corner.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

His bed is a little smaller than the one in her room, and Carol doesn’t move all the way to the wall when she climbs in. He lies facing her, not ready to show her his back again, even covered by a shirt. His eyes are heavy, but she is watching him solemnly, her gaze blue and clear and somehow cleansing.

“It was a hard run,” she murmurs, tracing his features with her eyes.

“Coulda been worse,” he replies drowsily.

“Your leg is hurting.”

He doesn’t reply, and she tucks her hands under her cheek.

“I’ll stop talking now,” she whispers, and his brow creases as he tries to tell whether she is serious.

“Talkin’s fine,” he mumbles, and as his eyes flutter shut, she reaches out and brushes her fingertips down his face, from his temple to his chin, a light caress that should make him tense up but doesn’t. Her touch is gone before he can process it, his skin tingling in its wake, and when he opens his eyes she is turning to face the wall, nestling into the pillow, readying herself for sleep. The back of her neck is pale and slender, the ends of her hair curling at her nape. He falls asleep thinking of the curve of her shoulder: its scattered freckles, its smooth skin, how it might taste against his tongue.

Chapter 24

Chapter Text

She leaves the others in the kitchen after Andrea hands her the clothes in her size, one blonde eyebrow raised for reasons Carol only understands when she folds back the sweatshirt on top of the pile.

“Shane saysDarylpicked them.” Andrea watches her closely, and Carol realises that, inexplicably, she is about to cry.

“Excuse me.” She holds the bundle against her chest and takes the stairs quickly. Sophia is eating milk duds with Carl, testing brand new Sharpies in a brand new sketchbook. Everyone is gathered to unpack the loot—everyone except Daryl, who volunteered to take watch while the others celebrated. She understands, now, why he left his pack for them and disappeared.

She takes the clothes to her room, and once the door is shut, she slides the bras and panties from between the larger items. Stroking the soft fabric, she watches her tears drip onto the satin and lace—white, silver-blue, deep red. She has never owned anything this beautiful, this delicate and feminine. Ed would not allow it, and it has been many years, anyway, since she has had looks worthy of pretty things.Lipstick on a pig, the cold weight of jewellery strung on her wrists and fastened around her neck. Ed understood her better than anyone, she thinks bitterly. Knew the full extent of her ugliness as no one else ever has.

Running a finger down a thin, smooth seam, she watches the blue lace blur, the colour melting into water beneath her gaze. She remembers sitting on the bank of the Ocmulgee River, laughing as she confessed to Daryl that she’d once thought she could be anyone, if only Ed were gone.It doesn’t matter, because it turns out I’m still the same person I always was.But that woman would never dare to wear these garments. Daryl, however unconsciously, has brought her choices: a reminder that she does not have to be any one thing. And a reminder that the extent of her ruin is a secret.

She takes an unsteady breath, contemplating the bras in her lap, fingering the ruffle on the red one. The woman who thrust the bolt into Ed’s neck might wear this, the woman who stared down into her dying husband’s eyes without an ounce of pity. For a moment, she tries to imagine Daryl standing among racks of undergarments, selecting the ones he thought she might like. Instead of disturbing her, the thought warms her: that he overcame what must have been acute discomfort to be her friend in this small, kind way.

There is a knock on the door and Andrea pokes her head around it, her face falling when she sees Carol’s.

“Hey,” she says, and comes inside. Carol wipes her eyes and smiles.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She clears her throat and puts the bras down with the other clothes. Andrea studies her kindly and comes to sit beside her.

“I get it. It’s kinda creepy thinking of those assholes picking our underwear. But—”

“No, I—”

“No, listen.” Andrea reaches across and takes Carol’s hand in hers. “Glenn told Maggie that apparently Shane was being a dick about it. Choosing…” She hesitates, flushing slightly. “Anyway, Daryl got pissed off with him and picked yours.” She huffs out a sigh. “Bunch of little boys. But I thought maybe it would help knowing Daryl didn’t—it wasn’t some kind of pervy move on his part.”

Carol stares at her, and splutters with weak laughter.

“I didn’t think—Daryl’s not like that.”

Andrea rolls her eyes. “Honey, they’realllike that. But not this time, evidently.”

“‘Maybe about you they are,” Carol says quietly, and looks down at their joined hands. “I think I’m safe.”

Andrea takes her hand away and Carol lifts her eyes to her friend’s. The blonde’s brow is furrowed.

“T-Dog was looking for you at lunchtime yesterday,” she says, and tilts her head to one side. “And I find it veryinterestingthat Daryl volunteered for this even if—”

“Stop.” Carol shakes her head and gets to her feet. “I told you, he’s not—we’re not—” She pauses, her breath snatched away by a sharp ache in her chest that has no explanation she can fathom. “Let me pack this away. Go down and get started on the kitchen.”

xxxx

His leg was so stiff when he woke up that it took him ten minutes to get out of bed, jaw clenched, hands bracing his thigh as though that might help. He forced himself to put weight on it and yelped as the muscle protested, but the pain eased as he limped back and forth across the room, warming up. His empty cocoa mug was gone, as was Carol. Glenn bumped into him in the hallway and told him, jubilantly, to bring his pack downstairs.

Instead, he left the pack for the others and came up to ground level, relieving Dale a good two hours before his shift ended. The day is cool, the sky a blue so pale it is almost white. He is hungry, his stomach gnawing, but he will wait until later, when the kitchen has emptied out. He lights a cigarette instead and massages his thigh with the palm of one hand as he inhales. Maybe he will hunt this afternoon, look for wild turkey. See if there is a fishing spot nearby.

An hour passes before he is disturbed, and he has sunk into a pleasantly detached state, limping endlessly around the perimeter, smoking when he feels like it, thinking of nothing except what he sees in front of him. The trees are losing their leaves, the edge of the forest jagged against the sky. When he was a boy, fall used to fill him with an urgency to be outdoors, almost more than summer did. The sense of winter ahead, the prospect of being confined, lengthened his autumn afternoons in the woods until long after dark.

“Daryl?”

He is at the gate, watching a squirrel scurry between the trees, its nose in the dirt every few feet. When he turns, mother and daughter have rounded the corner of the entrance building to find him. Sophia is staring at the ground, but Carol smiles at him. She is wearing the soft sweater he found her in the town where Ed died, her arms folded across her chest in the chill. He dips his chin in nervous greeting and stubs out his cigarette against one of the bars of the gate. The squirrel has disappeared.

They cross the grass to him. The girl is so stiff and clearly apprehensive that he avoids looking at her, watching Carol instead. She has lost colour since they moved into the bunker—they all have, even though they make a point of getting fresh air and sun every day. Only Daryl spends more daylight hours outside than in, his skin still the golden-brown it was for all of summer. In the milky sunlight of the morning, Carol’s eyes and hair appear the same silver-grey shade, her skin the colour of cream.

“Mornin’,” he says when the pair reach him, the word spoken too loudly and too quickly. Sophia says nothing, and Carol smiles at him.

“Morning.” Her eyes flit to his jaw, the place she touched during the night, and she swallows. “Thank you for all the things you brought back from the run.”

He grunts, kicking at a tuft of grass, and shrugs. Her hand rests on his forearm for a second.

“Truly,” she says softly, and he glances at her face and understands that she knows, somehow, that he was responsible for the underwear. Mortified, he opens his mouth and tries to find adequate words.

“Sorry,” he rasps. “Ain’t right, but I—”

“I appreciate it.” Her voice is firm, and she turns to Sophia, who has not lifted her head once during the exchange. “I’m going to go back downstairs, sweetheart.” She tucks a lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “Okay?”

The girl nods, and Carol gives Daryl an anxious look before leaving them. He clears his throat, shifting the crossbow on his shoulder. The child appears frozen in place, gripping the edge of her hoodie in white-knuckled hands.

“Wanna walk?” he mutters, shuffling his feet and staring towards the fence. She jerks her head, the movement visible in his periphery, and falls in beside him as he resumes his circuit of the perimeter. He should speak first. He is the adult. But as the silence between them gets heavier and heavier, he becomes less and less sure of what he should say, until he is paralysed by the weight of the decision.

“Please don’t—be mad at—me.”

They are passing the gate again, their strides matched. Sophia’s words are choked, tripping over one another, her voice pitched high. Daryl stops and looks down at her. She is crying, perhaps has been for some time without him noticing, her cheeks wet and her eyes red-rimmed. Stricken at having been so oblivious, he drops his crossbow and crouches in front of her. She is taking rapid, ragged breaths, her shoulders shaking as she gulps back sobs.

“Ain’tmadat you,” he says hoarsely. “Jesus, I ain’t mad at you, Soph.”

“That’s—what—Mama—said,” she hiccups, her chest heaving. The uncertainty in her eyes, the way she is twisting the hem of her top, reminds him of himself as a boy, trying to find coherence in one of his father’s drunken rages, trying to understand what to do next time to avoid his fury. Tentatively, he reaches out and pats Sophia’s shoulder, and before he can reassure her again, she rocks forward and buries her face in his neck, her hands clutching his shirt. He sways, almost losing his balance at the force of the movement.

“Hey,” he whispers, his throat aching. Clumsily, he puts his arms around her, afraid of holding her too tightly, afraid of hurting her. Beneath the thick cotton of the baggy hoodie, she is skinny and breakable. He thinks of the knife scar on her ankle and closes his eyes. “Your Mama was right. I ain’t mad at you.”

“How—come?”

He lifts a hand and cups it momentarily against the back of her head. Her hair is cold and silky.

“I know what your daddy was like,” he says quietly. “Know what you’re afraid of.”

She nods, her cheek slippery against his neck, her fingers tightening on his shirt as she suppresses another sob. The pity he feels for her is a pity he has never allowed himself to feel for the child he was, and he does not do so now. Even at its outermost edge, the pain of that place inside him is breathtaking.

“Need you to know I’m never gonna hurt your momma.” He pauses, rubbing Sophia’s back with a rough tenderness, the calluses on his palm catching on the fabric of her hoodie. “Hear me? What your daddy did, no one is gonna do that to her again.Ever.”

He feels better saying it out loud, promising it both to himself and to the child. As he holds her, she begins to calm, the tension in her muscles easing, her breath getting gradually steadier. His thigh is throbbing from the awkward position, but he won’t let her go first, not when she is holding him so fiercely. She smells of chocolate and something floral, and between them a layer of warmth has grown.

“Sorry I scared you,” he says after a while. She lifts her head and looks at him, her fingers at last relaxing against his chest. Her face is blotchy, freckles lost in the red of her weeping.

“She—sleeps better with you.” Her voice is husky. “She told me so.”

He flushes, his eyes flicking away from hers for a second.

“Same for me,” he says shortly, realising the truth of it as he speaks. Her brow creases, but a second later she nods, and something inside him unclenches. He stands abruptly, picking up his crossbow.

“You’re friends.”

He glances at the girl, who is watching him through swollen eyes, frowning slightly, and he reddens further.

“Yeah,” he says. “Friends.”

He starts walking before she can ask anything more, and she trots to catch up with him. There is a lightness to her step, to her manner now, and she starts to talk as they turn at the fence, about milk duds and the LEGO Rick brought back for Carl. Daryl listens, and tries not to wonder whether he has lied to her; whether he is lying to Carol, too, each time he is near her pretending not to want her.

xxxx

They fall into a rhythm after the Savannah run, for a peaceful three-week period during which each member of the group seems to figure out their purpose in the bunker. Daryl hunts every few days and takes more watch shifts than anyone else. At night, when he is off duty, he comes to Carol’s room and slips into bed, never touching her and seldom speaking, and she finds some respite from her nightmares, the comfort of his voice on the nights when her bad dreams return. He is usually gone by the time she wakes for the day, and on the rare mornings that he isn’t, she likes to watch him, his face unlined and peaceful until he stirs. It is a privilege, she thinks, seeing him like this when no one else gets to do so.

His limp improves, his leg less noticeably stiff in the mornings, and sometimes she brings laundry above ground and finds him jogging around the fence as he keeps watch, strengthening the muscle now that the pain is lessening. He stops when he sees her, ambling over to help her hang up sheets and towels instead. Sometimes she brings him snacks from the kitchen, or coffee, and chats to him while he breaks pieces off a muffin, licking his fingers between bites.

He starts doing knife work a few days a week with her and Sophia. The child is quicker to learn than her mother, more confident in her new skill set. After Carol repeatedly misses her target one evening, Daryl takes her aside, and works the brass knuckles gently off her fingers. He is more comfortable with her, physically, during lessons than he is at other times, his contact with her easy and unembarrassed.

“Holdin’ it too tight,” he tells her. They are outside, Sophia stabbing blithely at a dummy Daryl made from throw cushions, a sheet, and a wooden cross. He studies Carol, turning her knife in his hand. “Just me an’ Soph here. What you worried ‘bout?”

“I’m not—” She sighs impatiently. “I’m not worried. I’m careful. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

He considers her a moment longer, and then looks over at Sophia.

“Lift your elbow,” he calls to the child. She turns, her face flushed with exertion, and nods, grinning. His eyes still on the girl, Daryl addresses Carol. “Was a kid when I learnt to use a knife. Younger than her.” He looks down at the blade in his hands. “Thought I was really somethin’. Right up until my first kill.” He glances at her. “Merle trapped a rabbit an’ made me slit its throat.”

She pulls a sympathetic face, and he shrugs.

“Was good for me. Necessary.” He looks up at Sophia again. “But after that rabbit, I wouldn’t even pick up a knife for weeks. Merle beat the tar outta me ‘cause of it.”

She frowns, leaning towards him a little. Even in the cold of early evening, he radiates heat, the scents of tobacco and sweat drifting off his skin.

“Why not?” she asks. “You didn’t like killing it?”

“Wasn’t that.” He exhales through his nose and shifts his eyes back to her face. “Was more…I was scared of bein’ableto do that. Take a life.”

She is the one to look away now, towards her daughter. Ed’s face materialises before her. contorting as he gurgles and screams and falls silent, the bolt jutting from his neck, the driveway dark with blood.

“Ain’t a bad thing, feelin’ that way.” His voice is rough. She wishes he would touch her, ground her, bring her place beside Ed’s body. “Means you respect it. The—the power.” He holds out her knife by the blade. “Just gotta remember that you’re in control. Here.”

Her fingers are trembling as she slides them into the handle. He curls his hand over her knuckles, his fingers stilling hers as he closes them around the knife, his grip loose and comfortable, his skin dry and warm.

“Only does what youchooseto make it do.” He drops his hand and jerks his head towards the dummy. “Go on.”

As she walks away, he calls after her softly.

“Carol?”

She looks back.

“That rabbit didn’ deserve to die.” Daryl lifts his chin, his blue eyes sharp. “But him? He deserved it. An’ more.”

As the days pass, Carol accepts, finally, that Andrea might be right about T-Dog’s interest in her, though she is confident it is simply because she is the only single woman in the bunker. If he is free, he hovers while she works, chatting to her, crowding her with an eagerness she cannot match. Because he has said nothing overt, she cannot express her lack of interest other than by being polite and no more; and even if he did speak up, the thought of refusing him rouses a familiar fear in her. He is not Ed, she tells herself each time he approaches her. He is a good, kind man. Perhaps he will never reveal his intentions, and she will never have to find the courage to say no.

Andrea and Shane no longer bother to hide their relationship, though the blonde still denies that it is a relationship at all. Carol delivers a stack of clean laundry to Andrea’s room one morning, and the blonde opens the door wrapped in a towel, her hair in a messy bun, wet tendrils clinging to her neck. There is a smudge on her throat—a fading love bite.

“Come and talk to me while I dress,” she says to Carol, taking the laundry and kissing Carol’s cheek in a sweet gesture of thanks.

“Shane isn’t here?” Carol asks dryly as she closes the door behind her. Andrea laughs, sliding the clean clothes onto the dresser and opening a drawer.

“You just missed him.” She glances back, her cheeks pink, and Carol sits down on the edge of the bed, immediately regretting the decision. The sheets smell of Shane’s cologne and sex. Andrea, a pair of black panties in one hand, drops her towel and turns around as she pulls on the underwear. “He’s on watch this morning.”

The blonde is entirely unselfconscious about her body, with good reason. She is beautiful: her skin taut and flawless, her breasts firm. Flustered by the other woman’s poise, Carol averts her eyes, but not before she has been reminded just how ravaged her own body is, by childbirth and old injuries, by Ed’s deliberate disfigurement of her. She tugs her cardigan closed, staring down at the Persian rug and listening to the rustle of fabric as Andrea dresses.

“I wanted to ask your opinion on something.”

Carol looks up. The blonde has loosened her hair and is untangling it with her fingers, a troubled expression on her face.

“What is it?” Carol says, her brow furrowed with concern. Andrea sighs, and turns to face the mirror, spraying something vanilla-scented onto her hair.

“The…thing with Shane and Lori.” She picks up a comb. “Do you think—do you think they—” She lowers her hand before she has touched her hair with the comb. “Are they done with each other?”

Her eyes meet Carol’s in the mirror, and Carol gives her a rueful look. The blonde drops her gaze to the dresser.

“sh*t.”

“He—really likes you, Andrea.” Carol gets to her feet and walks across to the other woman. “I think it’s complicated with them.” She takes a slow breath. “The baby.”

Andrea nods, squaring her shoulders, smiling grimly at Carol as she lifts her head.

“That baby will be Rick’s,” she says. “Shane knows it and Lori knows it.”

Carol gazes at her levelly in the mirror.

“Of course it will. But it’s a child, not an object. Shane can’t help if he feels something for...for his own child.”

A moment passes before Andrea tosses her hair back and starts to comb it, her face hard.

“Doesn’t matter either way,” she says defiantly. “Like I’ve said from the start, this is just sex, this thing between me and Shane. I don’t want him dragging his issues into my bed, is all.”

Dale’s plan to power the heavy front door of the bunker is what disrupts this brief, relatively peaceful period in the lives of the group. The weight of the door is an endless source of complaint for Andrea, Lori, and Maggie, and—though she doesn’t give voice to her frustration— Carol is annoyed by it daily. Pushing it open or pulling it closed requires a measure of strength only the younger men possess individually. Any time the others want to go in or out, they need assistance, or they have to leave the door open; and the group has agreed that, for security’s sake, it should be kept shut.

But then Dale reveals one evening, with glee, that at some point the door was operable via remote control.

“They disconnected it when they switched fully to solar power, is my guess,” the old man tells the group over dinner. “But honestly, the power the system uses is negligible, unless the door’s being opened and closed continuously for hours at a time.”

“You know how to make it work?” asks Andrea, pausing as she slices into a piece of venison pie. Dale smiles proudly, nodding.

“It’s pretty simple. Didn’t even think of it until I found the old clickers in a box in the control room.” He raises an eyebrow. “But I could get it up and running tomorrow, no problem.”

“Do it,” snaps Lori. “I’m sick of having to find Rick or Shane just so I can go upstairs for some fresh air.”

The following day is unseasonably warm—balmy and hot, not too muggy, the sky a crisp, quenching blue. Dale fiddles with the door and the clickers in the morning, and summons everyone for a demonstration shortly before midday. He has oiled the door, so it glides silently on the hinges, and though its automated movement is slow, it is smooth. Andrea leads them in a cheer for the old man, and by some kind of tacit agreement, they all head upstairs together. The day is beautiful, there are no urgent tasks to do, and they are buoyed by this latest step towards making their lives easier. Daryl and T-Dog stand apart from the rest and smoke, Rick tosses a ball with the kids, and the others sprawl on the grass or perch on the meter cover. Carol takes down some dry clothes from the line, and pauses next to Lori, who is sitting with her back against the wall of the entrance block.

“Should we have a picnic lunch up here?” Carol suggests. “Might be the last time we can all be outside in weather like this for a while.”

“Mmmm.” Lori has her eyes closed, her head tipped back. “Sure. Yeah.”

The two clickers Dale programmed are resting on the windowsill next to the doorway into the building, and Carol takes one as she heads down the stairs. As she descends, she contemplates what might serve as a picnic meal—crackers and spreads, pickles and olives, some cold meat. She misses cheese, and fresh dairy products. Maybe, she muses as she clicks the remote, they will eventually have a cow. Chickens.

It is a reflex to close the door behind her, and she turns to do so manually before she remembers the clicker. Chuckling, she lifts it back out the laundry basket in her arms and presses the button, admiring for a moment the precision of the mechanism, the ease with which the metal bulk glides shut.

She starts across the rug towards the business hub before the door is fully closed, and she is within sight of the spiral staircase to the kitchen when the power in the bunker shuts down. It happens as the door locks, with a thump that seems to resound in the sudden silence that follows it: the silence, after weeks of constant humming, of the lights and ventilation system switching off. The darkness is complete, a black unrelieved by anything at all, and when Carol looks down, she can see neither the laundry basket in her arms nor the floor beneath her feet.

She fumbles for the clicker, dropping the basket as she turns back towards the door, invisible to her now. The remote control does nothing. She presses and waits, presses and waits, the button growing slick under her thumb, but there is no sound of machinery, no whirr of the fans starting up again. There is no sound at all, down here, except her own frantic breathing.

Chapter 25

Chapter Text

She measures darkness by its density: not merely its depth but its weight, the degree to which it presses down on her heart and lungs, the crown of her head. Unlit, with no means of escape, the bunker is a coffin, the darkness crushing her as she stumbles towards the door, her hands outstretched. When her palms hit the metal, she brings her whole body against it, gasping, feeling for the seam where it meets the doorframe.

“Hello? Anyone?” Her voice is shredded into breathy strands of sound, none of them loud enough to penetrate the steel. Not even a scream could do that, she thinks. She digs her nails into the crack. “Someone.”

Her knees buckle as the darkness pushes down on her shoulders: Ed’s hands forcing her to her knees, rope chafing her wrists. She tries to breathe slowly and makes a low whooping sound that is immediately swallowed by the black air and the earth beyond it. The rug is so soft when her hands drop to the fabric, the plush texture of rotting vegetation in her fingers. She hangs her head.Breathe.Breathe. The voice is Daryl’s, and she turns towards it, her forehead bumping the door.

“Daryl?” she whispers. The darkness muffles even that, a hand across her mouth, thick fingers between her lips. Her chest wheezes and stutters. Ed’s body hunches over hers and weighs her down, flattening her against the floor. Her cheek presses into the rug, and she reaches for the gap that should run along the bottom of the door. There is none: the metal meets the frame snugly. Closing her eyes, she scrapes at the groove, rolling onto her side so she can use both hands.Weak f*ckin’ bitch. Ed pulls the rope around her ankles tighter.Listen to yourself.

xxxx

He smokes five cigarettes with T-Dog, listening to the other man talk about bikes, lighting each consecutive smoke with the end of the previous one. The tension between the two men is not as bad as it was at the quarry, but it is worse than it was when the group reunited, worse since that drive in the truck. Daryl tells himself it is because they occupy themselves in different ways most of the time, and don’t hang out much. It has nothing to do with Carol. Nothing to do with the surge of despair he feels each time the other man approaches her.

As Daryl drops the butt of his last cigarette, grinding it out with the toe of one boot, T-Dog, who has been silent for a few minutes, clears his throat.

“Thinkin’ I might talk to Carol soon.”

Daryl stiffens, and squints at him. “Seem to talk to her most days.”

The other man laughs. “Yeah, I mean…talkto her, you know? Ask her—ask her out.”

Snorting, the skin of his back suddenly clammy, Daryl sneers. “Where to, man? A movie? Fancy restaurant?”

T-Dog considers him with slight puzzlement. “Maybe dinner for two.” He shrugs. “I’ll make a plan.”

Daryl looks away, kicking viciously at the edge of the paving that borders one side of the entrance building. Near the solar panels, the kids are laughing as Rick plays ball with them. Hershel, his face upturned to the sun, is sitting on the meter cover nearby. There is no sign of Carol. The other women are lounging in a row against one wall, and Dale, Shane and Glenn are arguing about something over by the RV.

Daryl grunts at T-Dog and walks over to the line of women. Andrea lifts a hand to shade her eyes, and looks up at him, smirking.

“What’s up, Daryl?” she asks. He bristles instantly at the teasing note in her voice, the promise of mockery, and he stares dumbly at her, unwilling suddenly to speak Carol’s name.

“Nothin’,” he says tersely. She co*cks her head to one side.

“Just came to admire the view, did you?”

He scowls and takes a step backwards. Andrea laughs.

“God, it’s no fun with you. You’re looking for Carol?”

He reddens, about to deny it, and then nods once, a small, sharp movement of his head. Andrea’s smile softens into something less sarcastic, and he slides his gaze from hers.

“She’s getting food for lunch,” Lori says, sounding bored, and yawns, blinking as she opens her eyes. The back of her head rests against the wall. “She’s downstairs.”

He nods again, in thanks this time, and trudges past them into the entrance building. One of the clickers is gone from the windowsill, and he takes the other. At the bottom of the first flight of stairs he halts, frowning. Something is amiss. Dust motes swim in the sunlight that reaches down this far, the noise of the ballgame like a TV show playing in another room. Daryl listens. Hears what isn’t there.

“sh*t.sh*t.” He takes the stairs two at a time back to the top, and yells, his hand gripping the rail. “Dale! Power’s out!”

He doesn’t wait for the old man to answer or appear, but starts down the stairs again, taking them dangerously fast on a leg that isn’t back to full strength. The silence, as he descends, amplifies itself, until it feels like he is fighting through it, the scrape and thud of his feet barely dislodging the quiet at all. How long has the ventilation system been down? How long has the bunker been flooded with darkness? How long has Carol—

He starts calling her name when he reaches the second-last flight, and he bends over the rail, flicking his lighter until the flame catches and relieves the gloom just enough, for a split second, for him to know the door is shut. His shout sinks into the thick walls, glances off the steel door.

“Carol!” He drops the lighter as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, and is winded for a second by the oppressive atmosphere. Under his palms, when he crosses the stairwell, the door is cold and solid. “Carol!”

“Daryl?” Dale’s voice drifts down to him. “What happened?”

“You gotta flashlight in the RV?” Daryl calls up, his voice edged with panic. “No lights, no ventilation. Nof*ckin’access.”

The silhouette of the old man’s head appears over the stair rail three flights up, vague against a tiny patch of daylight far above Daryl.

“The door,” Daryl shouts, and smacks his hand against it impatiently. “Gotta get it open. Carol’s in there.”

Dale disappears again, his footsteps fading upwards, back towards ground level. Daryl feels his way to the manual door lock, gripping the stiff spindle and pulling as though it might budge. The futility of it is laughable, but anxiety is like a current under his skin, and he has todo something. The door doesn’t even creak in answer to his efforts, and as the faint light of a flashlight beam begins to bob off the plaster and metal, Dale on his way down again, Daryl thuds his forehead against the door in frustration, still holding the spindle with both hands.

“Carol,” he whispers. He thinks of her huddled form against the wall in her bedroom, the tangled sheets and the scrabble of her fingers, the way she fought for breath.

“What happened?”

He straightens and turns, his eyes watering at the sudden brightness of the flashlight. Dale, toolbox in one hand, peers at him.

“No idea,” Daryl snaps. “But the power’s down an’ the goddamn door won’t open an’ Carol is stuck in there in the f*ckin’dark.”

“She afraid of the dark?” Shane has descended behind Dale, invisible to Daryl in the glare of the light. He sounds amused. Daryl steps forward menacingly. Dale thunks down his tools hurriedly and lays a hand on the hunter’s arm.

“She’s claustrophobic, you asshole,” Daryl snarls. Shane is silent, his dark eyes appraising. “An’ she’s stuck in there with no goddamn light.”

“All right, all right. Shane?” Dale directs the flashlight beam at the floor between them. “Who’s got the radio?”

The radio. Whoever is technically on watch right now will have it. Its partner is standing on a table just inside the bunker.

“Rick,” says Daryl loudly, and starts for the stairs. Dale grabs his arm.

“Shane, you go.” Furious, Daryl yanks himself free, his lip curling, and the old man holds up his hand. “Shane doesn’t have an injured leg, Daryl. He’ll be faster.”

The cop pushes past them and ascends the stairs.

“My guess is it’s just a tripped switch,” Dale says.

“So untrip it.” Daryl glares at him. The older man’s expression is strained.

“The switch is inside. Carol will have to do it.”

xxxx

She focuses on the little sounds that survive the darkness, the strange whine of her breath, the tiny, slick movement of her fingers on the seam beneath the door. She has torn a nail, she thinks. She can smell iron, and her fingertips slip and slide, her skin squeaking in the blood, unless she digs her remaining nails into the gap.

She cannot fill her lungs, and dizziness overcomes her from time to time, her hands going limp, her eyes closing as she hovers near unconsciousness. Each time, her body fights harder for air and drags her back to herself, and she begs Ed to let her out, or let her go. Her voice rasps and whistles and hurts her throat.

The crackle of the radio makes her flinch, the sound like electricity, a stun gun buzzing to life. She braces, waiting for Ed to hold it to her flesh, but he doesn’t. Instead, a tinny voice says her name,Carol? Carol, can you hear me?She opens her eyes.Carol? It’s me. It’s Daryl. You there?

“Daryl.” She stares blindly into the darkness and rubs her fingertips over the metal of the door.

“If you’re there, get the radio.” He sounds the way she used to when she tried to calm Sophia after the child had seen Ed beat her mother. His anguish is held at bay by careful, slow syllables, but Carol can hear it, the hitch of his breath between the words, the way his voice cuts out in odd places. “It’s on the table near the door. Carol, talk to me. Need to—need to know you’re—”

He stops. A moment later, Dale’s voice comes sharply over the radio. The urgency in it quickens her breathing, sweat beading on her scalp.

“Carol, it’s Dale. The main power switch has tripped. You need to turn it back on. Are you there?”

The force of his tone frightens her, the words warping in her ears before she has time to comprehend them. Her mind is frozen by fear, by the certainty that she will die here, the air getting thinner and thinner until she chokes on darkness. Dale knows it too. She can hear it.

“Pick up the radio, Carol.Pick it up.”

His voice accepts no refusal. If she fails to obey, she will be punished. She fights the sluggishness of her thoughts, urges them on. The radio. The table. She tries to orient herself in the entrance hall, tries not to feel Ed on her back, or the weight of the earth overhead. The table should be in front of her, only a couple of feet.Only. Ed chuckles. She is so tired.

“Carol.”Daryl.She moans softly with relief, closes her eyes and imagines him lying facing her, the way he does sometimes at night, his gaze on her face discernible even when her eyes are shut. Her hand leaves the door and settles on the rug where his face would be. She touched it once, weeks ago, the night he came back from the last run. She should have paid more attention to how it felt in the moment, the bone of his jaw and the scratch of his whiskers, the soft skin in front of his ear.

“Carol, we can’t—you gotta pick up the radio.” His voice cracks. Her lashes are wet, her fingertips sticky with fresh and drying blood. “Pick it up. You can do it. You can doanythin’. Hear me?”

I can’t, she thinks. But the handle of her knife is digging into her hip and there is a fresh blister beneath the middle finger of her right hand, where a callus will eventually form.

She rolls onto her stomach, one shoulder crammed against the door, and she lifts her head, panting, waiting for a fresh, suffocating wave of terror to pass. Her fingers throb as she claws at the rug, heat trickling from her broken nails. Ed straddles her, presses his hands over hers, and she sobs, a small, desolate sound.

“Carol.” Daryl’s voice brushes past her in the darkness. “‘S just—‘s just me here now.” He hesitates. “Just me an’ you. Gonna do this—together.” A note of doubt enters his voice. “Dunno if you’re even near enough to hear me.” The radio is silent for a few seconds. “Can’t—can’t get the door open from here.” The words are uneven. “But you can open it, Carol. Just gotta talk to me.”

xxxx

He loses it, curses at the other man, after Dale takes the radio from him and barks orders into it the way Ed used to bark orders at Carol. The old man stumbles backwards, startled, when Daryl grabs the device from him.

“Don’t f*ckin’ speak to her like that,” Daryl hisses. Dale stares at him.

“A firm instruction can actually help sometimes during a panic attack,” he says, affronted. Daryl moves closer to him, his rage burning so brightly that every breath feels like a flame in his lungs.

“She’s terrified,” he says venomously. “You don’t—you ain’t—don’tspeakto her like that. You’re gonna make it worse.”

Dale’s brow creases as he searches Daryl’s face, and then his manner shifts from defensive to deferent.

“Okay. That’s fine.”

They are alone in the stairwell, the flashlight balanced on a step so the beam fills the space with a murky twilight. Shane brought the radio and Dale sent him right back up, telling him to keep the others away, not to distress Sophia until it was necessary. They are still playing ball, Shane said before heading back up. Only the adults know that Carol is locked inside, and they will distract the children as long as they can.

Awkward, suddenly, Daryl looks away from Dale. The plastic of the radio is warm in his hand.

“The mains board is at the top of the stairs down to the kitchen,” the old man says gently. “She’ll have walked past it before. Top left corner is the switch that’s most likely tripped.”

Daryl frowns, flicking his eyes to Dale’s face briefly.

“I’m going to go halfway up and let you talk to her.” Dale pats his arm. “Seems like it might be easier if it’s someone she—someone she knows well.”

“Don’t even know if she can hear me,” Daryl mutters. “What if she—”What if she had a panic attack downstairs and passed out? What if she hit her head? What if she’s screaming for help behind that door and I can’t f*cking hear her?His mouth twists, and he turns away from the other man. Dale takes a breath, hesitating, but doesn’t speak, walking past Daryl a moment later and heading upstairs.

It is somehow easier to talk to Carol once he is alone, which Dale must have sensed. Daryl rests his head against the door, one hand pressed to the steel, and tells her she can do it. Tells her he’s there, wishes it meant more than it does. And then, as the metal beneath his forehead grows hot, and the lump in his throat expands, he makes himself reach further into the darkness for her.

“Know you’re scared.” His thumb aches on the radio button. “Know you’re—know you’re thinkin’ of him an’ what he did to you.” He releases the button and clears his throat before continuing. “But he ain’t there, Carol. He’s dead. He ain’t ever touchin’ you again.”

There is silence in reply, as there has been from the start. Daryl steps back from the door, his head bent and his eyes closed, and then throws himself at it, slamming into it with his shoulder, the side of his body, screaming with wordless frustration as he does so. To get inside, they would have to cut through nearly a foot of metal or concrete. He smacks the door with his palm again, kicking it at the same time.

“Da-ryl.” The word is so faint that he thinks he has imagined it, but the radio in his hand gives a soft pop of static.

“Carol?” he says hoarsely, lifting the device to his mouth.

“Switch.” She sounds dazed, her voice a croak. “Where.”

“On the wall at the top of the spiral staircase,” he says as clearly as he can, resisting the urge to ask if she is all right. “Put your back to the door.”

Silence, and then a softOkay.

“Good. Good. Now walk forward till you reach the table in the business hub.”

The silence this time stretches on and on. He squats outside the door, holding the radio so tightly that his fingers cramp. The low battery light has started to flash red on one side. Thudding his head gently against the door, over and over, he begins to count the seconds as they pass.

“Can’t.” She is crying, wheezing for air. “Can’t—get there.”

“You can.” Daryl’s eyes sting. “Jus’ keep moving forward. It’s in fronta you. You walkin’?”

She gulps before replying. “Crawling.”

He grits his teeth, runs his free hand through his hair and yanks at a handful of the strands, the pain producing a burst of stars behind his eyes.

“Then you’re gonna feel a chair in front of you first. The wooden legs. The crossbar.” He pictures it in his mind, but the image of her on hands and knees in the dark hurts too much. “An’ then you’re gonna turn right, towards the stairs.”

“Can’t.” The radio picks up half a sob before it cuts out. “Can’t breathe.”

The low battery light blinks. Daryl rocks forward onto his knees, dropping one hand to the dusty concrete floor, hanging his head.

“Breathe with me. Nice an’ slow. Breathe with me.”

He holds the radio close to his mouth and inhales deeply, holding the breath for a second before exhaling. She does not respond, but he does it again, and again, and again, the light flashing, casting a tiny red dot onto the steel of the door.

xxxx

She loses him somewhere between the business hub and the stairs, in an expanse of black that seems neverending. The radio plays a short, high chime that drowns out the sound of his breathing, the tempo to which she has been matching her crawl, and then the device dies, the battery exhausted. She has not been able to control her inhalations, despite his encouragement, and she lowers her forehead to the floor as she releases the radio, trying not to hyperventilate. She is at the brink of it, lightheaded, her ribs aching.Just keep moving forward.Daryl is right outside that door. She tries to imagine away the layers of concrete and steel.Breathe with me, his shoulder against hers, his voice so close to her ear when she lifts her head that she shapes his name, unable to speak it, the syllables tasting of salt and tobacco.

She keeps moving forward. Without the radio, the darkness presses in, the silence swallowing her whole, but each time she places her hands, the blister on her right palm twinges.You can do it.The floor near the stairs is smooth and cold, painted screed that makes her knees ache and reminds her, as she crawls onto it, of the floor of the basem*nt where Ed used to lock her. Her shoulder hits the curving bars of the stair rail, and she cringes from the impact.Stupid bitch. The back of her shirt is soaking wet, and as she sways on the basem*nt floor she isn’t sure if it is blood or urine or cum.

“Please—don’t.” The words are comical, birdlike in timbre. Ed laughs. She inches forward, groping at the bottoms of the railing poles, gripping one as she reaches for the next. There is steady breathing behind her, but it is Ed, not Daryl, watching her come apart, waiting for the moment when she believes absolutely that she is about to die. She reaches forward, reaches further, her fingers fluttering. There is only open space: the top of the stairs.

Three feet beyond the gap is the wall, and when she reaches it, she is shaking violently, her teeth chattering between gasps. She lies down, curls up with her back against the skirting. Above her is the mains board, which she has passed perhaps a hundred times on her way to the kitchen or her bedroom. All she has to do is stand up and flick the switch.

xxxx

The radio dies and he yells, a roar of fury, the echo dampened immediately. He is still on his hands and knees, and he wants nothing more than to smash the device in his hand, hurl it against the wall opposite him. He leaves it on the floor and gets to his feet, striking the door with his fists, whining through clenched teeth as he pummels it uselessly.

“What happened?” Dale is behind him, out of breath. Above the old man, Daryl can hear approaching footsteps, voices.Sophia. He turns to face Dale, who blanches, and Daryl realises, with astonishment, that his cheeks are wet. He touches one with his fingertips and looks down at them.

“Walkie died,” he says roughly, and gestures at it on the ground. Dale goes to pick it up and turns to him once more, the old man’s expression wary. “She was near the board, but I—she was—strugglin’.”

The clatter of feet gets louder. Lori is speaking, and Rick, and something collides with Daryl as he peers up at the stairs. Sophia, her hands closing on his wrists, her face a white oval as she looks up at him. He wishes he’d wiped his face properly.

“We’ll get her out,” he says. He doesn’t know what the words even mean, because he has done nothing but wait and rage. “She’ll—I spoke to her, she’s gonna—she’s gonna—”

“I want to talk to her!”

The voices of the others fall silent as Sophia’s rises above them, quavering and frantic. Daryl crouches in front of her to answer.

“Battery’s dead, Soph.”

“But she doesn’t like being locked up.” The words are clear as a bell. The air in the stairwell trembles and settles again as the rest of the group shifts uneasily.

“I know.” His gaze slides from hers guiltily. “I know. We’re gonna get her out.”

Sophia’s fingers tighten on his wrists, pincer-like, and she starts shaking her head. But before she can speak, before she can condemn him for his failure, the lights come up: level by level, they flicker on, the hum of the fans beginning once more, and Daryl wrenches himself free of the child and takes the clicker out his pocket, pressing it as he lunges for the door.

The steel slab opens with excruciating slowness, and he fights, pointlessly, to force the gap with his body, jamming his hand and then his arm and finally his shoulder into the widening space. The others watch in a silence which, later, he realises was stunned; but for now he is aware of no one but Carol, aware of nothing but the traces of blood on the rug at the threshold, the smears on the bottom of the door as it glides open.

He calls her name as he squeezes inside at last, running towards the business hub. There is no reply. But when he reaches the table and turns towards the stairs, he sees her, his heart stopping for a moment. She is kneeling beneath the mains board, her back to him, trying to stand up. Her fingers are splayed against the plaster, blood streaking the backs of her hands. On the floor at her side is the other clicker for the door.

He doesn’t wait to see if she can make it back onto her feet. He says her name, a moan this time, and she turns her head as he reaches her, her lips parted as she takes laboured, creaking breaths, her eyes bloodshot and unseeing. He scoops her up like a child, cradling her in his arms, her head dropping to his shoulder as her hands curl against his chest.

“Sorry,” she pants, and the word splits him open, the edge of a chisel hammered with a single blow into the wood’s grain.

“You’re okay,” he says, though he doesn’t really know. “You did it. You did it.”

“Carol!” Andrea pushes through the others, who have followed Daryl inside and are standing in a silent, staring cluster, and stops in front of him. Behind her, Sophia waits, an expression of dread on her face which Daryl doesn’t understand.

“Get outta my way,” he spits at Andrea. With Carol in his arms, her body trembling as she pants, he is suffocating too, his skin absorbing her fear. “Get the f*ck outta my way.”

Andrea steps aside without a word. He pauses when he reaches Sophia, looking for reassurance to give her, his mouth opening as his throat closes. Instead, she speaks first.

“She needs to sleep,” the girl tells him in an odd, mechanical way. “She’ll sleep for a long time, but you have to open the windows.”

He stares down at her for a second, and then nods and walks on, out the door and up the stairs, moving as quickly as he can, angling his body so Carol’s dangling feet don’t bump the stair rail. As he climbs, he whispers to her,you’re okay you’re okay, glancing at her closed eyes from time to time, the tangle of bloodied fingers against his shirt. At the top of the stairs, the daylight confuses him. It is early afternoon, the sun high and a warm breeze drifting through the open door. Carol shudders, and gasps.

“‘S right,” he murmurs. “We’re outside. Breathe. You can breathe.”

He doesn’t want to lay her on the ground, wants privacy for her as well as fresh air. And so he heads for the RV, its door standing open, and carries her inside, to the bed at the far end. She startles as he eases her into it, her eyes dark and frightened, her hands snatching at his shirt. He catches them gently in his own and she closes her eyes again. Her fingers are sticky with drying blood, and he lowers his face to them for a second, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Just gonna open the windows. Soph said to open the windows.”

He realises, as the words leave his mouth, that the girl was speaking from experience: from years of watching her mother emerge from the basem*nt, in a state just like this one. His stomach clenches with nausea. He lays Carol’s hands on the comforter and moves through the RV, opening windows, unlatching the sunroof and pushing it as wide as it will go. There is a tap on the door as he opens the last window. Andrea peers inside from the top of the steps.

“For her hands.” She holds out a small first aid kit, a bottle of water, and his lighter, which she must have picked up from the stairwell. The bottle is warm when Daryl takes it from her. He should thank her and apologise, but he does neither.

“Sophia—” he begins. The blonde nods over her shoulder.

“She’s right here.”

Sophia steps into the campervan, her gaze going instantly to the figure of her mother on the bed. The child blinks, eyes awash with tears for a moment; but when she blinks again, they are gone. She raises her hands slightly in front of her in a hesitant movement, the fingers of one closing around the wrist of the other, twisting this way and that way, her brow creased.He had a rope. Daryl puts the bottle and the kit on the counter, the lighter in his pocket, and moves into the child’s line of sight.

“Just her fingers, Soph. She just hurt her fingers. Gonna clean her up now.” The girl’s hands fall to her sides, and he crouches in front of her. “You don’t have to be here. ‘Kay? Not this time.”

It is, he knows, a strange, harsh thing to say. Behind the child, Andrea frowns at him. But Sophia finally looks away from her mother and at his face, her chin wobbling. He nods.

“I got this,” he says softly. “You come when you’re ready.” He glances back at Carol, unmoving on the bed, and shivers, his muscles straining towards her. Sophia’s hand touches his cheek and his head whips round to face her, the touch startling him, his body still charged with adrenalin. Her pupils flare. He waits for her to speak, but she doesn’t; she looks at him as though assessing his reliability, and he looks back, letting her see how badly he wants to go to her mother.

As soon as the girl turns to leave with Andrea, he returns to the bed. There are voices outside the RV, murmured conversations which he ignores. Carol lies exactly as he left her, but she is breathing easily now, colour returning to her cheeks. He sits beside her, careful not to shake the bed too much, and opens the first aid kit.

Her nails are broken, jagged and torn, the skin around them raw in places. He wets some cottonwool with warm water and cleans her hands finger by finger, removing splinters of nail, his eyes shifting between her face and his work. She is asleep, so deeply that she barely seems alive. Even the cold sting of disinfectant doesn’t disturb her, and when her hands are clean, he wipes her face, the tear stains and specks of blood, the sweat at her hairline. Her skin is smooth, soft, icy where his fingers brush it. He wants to bury his face in her neck and breathe her in, cover her with his body and keep her safe.

In the end, he removes his shoes and hers, and lies down behind her, shaping himself to her, pulling a blanket over them both. He does not have permission to touch her, but when she starts to tremble in her sleep, he closes the small space between them and puts an arm across her belly, tucking her back against his chest. She whimpers, her hand fumbling for his, her fingers jerking across his knuckles.

“Ssshhh.” He closes his eyes and rests his face in her hair. Her shoulder-blades slide against him. “Sleep now. You can sleep now.”

Chapter 26

Chapter Text

He doesn’t sleep. He is too wired, too jittery, unable to close his eyes in case Carol disappears. He holds her until she is warm, his forearm positioned carefully across her belly so he isn’t touching her hips or breasts. And after an hour or so, when she turns in his arms, sighing, her cheek against his chest, he gets off the bed and goes to sit at the little table in the RV. He is aroused, as he always is when she is so near to him, and he is disgusted with himself.

Through the window, he watches the butter yellow sunlight start to deepen into gold. At the fence opposite the campervan, Rick and Shane are having an earnest conversation, and at one point the sheriff’s deputy glances over and sees Daryl, half raising his hand in greeting. Daryl nods, and looks away, towards Carol. Her feet, in powder blue socks, are small and narrow. He wants so badly to lie with her again that he gets up and moves to the steps of the RV, lighting a cigarette. He is stunned by how quickly his concern for her has turned to desire, appalled at the distance that must exist between her trauma, when she awakens, and his lust. If she knew, she would shut him out.

T-Dog emerges from the bunker building while Daryl is smoking, a crate in his arms, which he brings to the RV and dumps at the foot of the steps. There are clothes in it, bottles of water, a thermos and some tupperware containers. T-Dog’s expression, when he meets Daryl’s eyes, is surly.

“Food an’ water an’ sh*t,” he says tersely. “‘Cause Dale says he guesses she won’t wanna sleep downstairs tonight.”

“Thanks.” Frowning, Daryl picks at a piece of dry skin next to his thumbnail, the cigarette bobbing between his fingers as he does. T-Dog turns away and then stops, looking back at the hunter.

“I asked you straight,” he says. “You coulda just told me.”

“Told you what?” Daryl retorts. He is angry still, he realises, with all of them. It is irrational, some kind of overzealous protective instinct that makes him want to keep everyone away from Carol. T-Dog looks past him, into the RV.

“That you an’ her…” T-Dog stops, his eyes shifting back to Daryl. “That you had somethin’ goin’ on.”

Daryl stares at him, and flicks ash from the end of his cigarette.

“Ain’tnothin’ goin’ on,” he says bitterly, but T-Dog shakes his head tiredly, turning away once more.

“Whatever, man. Whatever.”

Daryl looks down at the dirt, the sun heating the back of his neck, as the other man walks away. When T-Dog has entered the bunker, Daryl stands and picks up the crate, taking it into the RV and closing the door behind him.

“Sophia?”

The crate clunks onto the table and he goes to her. Her voice is husky, feeble, her head still on the pillow, and he climbs onto the bed and lies down facing her, where she can see him without moving.

“Soph’s with Andrea and Lori,” he tells her gently. Carol’s lips are dry and chapped, her eyes dull above dark smudges of exhaustion. Daryl tucks his hands against his sternum to keep from touching her. “She said to—to open all the windows.”

Carol’s chest hitches, and she closes her eyes, but not before he has seen the tears gathering in them.

“She came to visit,” he says helplessly. “An’ I told her—I told her I’d—” Carol turns her face half into the pillow, her lashes wet, her fingers twitching on the comforter. He reaches out and cups one hand over both of hers, careful not to jostle her fingers. “I cleaned your hands. Face.” He cannot stand to see her crying again. “Hope that was okay.”

She nods, bending her head now so he can’t see her face, her mouth close to his hand.

“Carol.” His voice trembles. Carrying her here was not enough. Cleaning her wounds, lying with her, none of it is enough. She is right in front of him and she still seems like a faraway, frightened voice over the radio. “Carol, I—”

“Come,” she whispers, without looking up, without moving. And yet when he shifts forward, a sound caught in his throat, she is waiting for him, her hands resting flat against his chest, her face fitting to the curve of his neck, her body flush with his as he wraps his arms around her. He tries to be gentle, but he holds her tighter and tighter, and she does not complain, or try to squirm free. She starts to murmur to him, the same soothing nonsense he spoke to her when he carried her out the bunker, her lips moving against his throat.

He does not know what is happening to him, why he needs so desperately to cling to her. He has lived for months in her proximity, seen her suffer without being permitted to intervene, heard her cry and gasp in pain and kept his distance. He has shut away rage and desire and shame, done his utmost to be her friend. But listening to her struggle for air with an impenetrable wall between them has dislodged something in him, tipped him into a need so frenzied that he is afraid he might damage her with it.

It is inevitable that he should become aroused. She smells of grapefruit and sleep, the alcohol scent of disinfectant. As he holds her, she separates her hands to allow for greater closeness, and her breasts are crushed against him, her hipbones digging into his abdomen. His co*ck is fully hard before he registers it, its heat trapped between their bodies, every breath she takes creating minute, torturous friction.

He does not want to let her go. He isn’t ready. But he does, rolling away from her and sitting up at the end of the bed, covering his face with his hands as he tries to calm himself. The bedclothes behind him rustle.

“Daryl,” she says softly. “It’s okay.”

He shakes his head without turning around. If he turns, if he sees her rumpled and drowsy, her shirt creased over her breasts, her gaze like water, he will do or say something that cannot be reversed. He bites his lip, so hard that he tastes metal on his tongue.

“Sorry,” he rasps. “Shouldn’—when you were in there an’ I couldn’ get to you—”

“I know,” she whispers. He thinks of Sophia’s empty stare, her fingers circling her wrist like a rope, Carol saying her daughter’s name as she woke. Locking his hands behind his neck, he rests his elbows on his knees and closes his eyes. His boxers are damp with precum. He cannot be here.

xxxx

She is unsteady on her feet, but when Daryl gets up and strides towards the door, she makes herself stand, his name a plea she knows he can’t refuse—not now, not today. He stops, his back to her, his shoulders squared, and she brushes past him and stands between him and the exit. He turns his face away from her, his cheeks red, a muscle twitching in his jaw. She feels a rush of tenderness for him, a pity that is, in its own way, as stifling as the darkness of the bunker. Stepping closer to him, she touches her fingertips to his chest.

“It’s okay,” she whispers again. There is a comforting familiarity to feeling this way, from years of tending to Sophia after she took care of her mother, spreading ointment on rope burns, fetching clean clothes. As soon as Carol was functioning, the child would clutch at her just as Daryl had, with a ferocity that awed and shamed Carol.This is how much she loves you.This is how frightened she was.

Daryl tries to move past her, ducking his head, but she shifts on her feet and stops him with a hand on his arm. A tremor passes through him. She can see his pulse in his throat.

“Don’t go.” She wets her lips, her eyes stinging. “I—it’s okay, Daryl, it’s—normal.”

He twists away from her, turning back towards the bed, letting out a grunt of frustration.

“Can’t be here,” he says, and turns to face her. There is blood on his lower lip, and he lifts his hands in front of himself to ward her off, his fingers shaking. “‘Kay? Need to be—somewhere else for a bit.”

She approaches him, holding his gaze. His eyes shimmer as she reaches him and looks up into his face.

“I know what you need,” she whispers, and her heart swells. She is lightheaded with exhaustion, with the aftermath of her ordeal. But the man who helped her is right here, wanting comfort, and it is so easy to give it to him, to ease his suffering the way he eased hers. His lip curls, his eyes dark, and suddenly her back is against the wooden cupboard door, Daryl’s hand slamming the wood beside her face, his body inches from hers as he grits his teeth and speaks.

“You don’t know sh*t,” he says viciously. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’ to me.” His hand lifts and he hits the wood again, his teeth bared, the panel’s vibration shuddering through her. She reaches up slowly and slides her fingers along the side of his neck, to his nape, her fingertips stinging as she combs them into his hair. He moans, swaying closer to her, and his forehead thuds against the wood beside her head. She turns her face and whispers in his ear, with all the tenderness she feels, with all the kindness.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He does not reach for her, not until the very end. He lifts his other hand to the cupboard, his palms flattened against the wood either side of her head, his biceps bracketing her face. He shifts his forehead to his forearm, his eyes closed, and she slips a hand between them and finds his co*ck, grazes her fingers over its length beneath his pants. He is hard still, as she knew he would be, his erection jerking beneath even a light touch. His shoulders rise and fall sharply. She knows what he needs, and she can give it to him. It is so easy, really, a kindness that costs her nothing but a few seconds of pain. For he is big, bigger than Ed and longer, his erection, restrained by damp cotton, jutting through his fly as she opens it. Her mouth is dry with fear, and Daryl is panting, his face hidden as she undoes the button of his jeans and lets them fall.

“It’s okay,” she whispers again, a mantra as much for herself as for him. There is more than merely pity at work, more than her longing to soothe him, a feeling she doesn’t yet know how to name. But as she slides his boxers down and sees him, his co*ck thick and red, the purple head slick already with precum and bumping her bellybutton, she is afraid, her muscles tight and resistant.

“Carol—” His voice is low, so strained that she can barely make out her name.

“Ssshhh,” she whispers, her urge to care for him overcoming her fear for long enough that she manages to close a hand around the base of his shaft. He gasps, thrusting against her palm, rocking closer so that she is trapped more firmly by his body against the cupboard. His head bumps hers as he turns his face into her neck, and with her free hand she strokes his hair as she traces the velvet skin of his length, the bulging vein that follows its curve. “It’s okay.”

She has to let him go to tug her pants down, but he does not move away, his body trembling, his co*ck pushing against her stomach. She is careful only to slide her underwear down to the middle of her thighs, and she takes nothing off, does not unbutton or lift her shirt. That is not what this is. That is not what he needs nor what she is capable of giving him. Even once she has bared herself, he does not try to touch her, though when his shaft rubs against the coarse hair on her mound he grunts, open-mouthed, and his lips graze the side of her neck, his head pressing against hers briefly. She takes hold of his co*ck once more, her fingers unable to close around its girth, and she guides it between her legs, into the small, tight space above the waistband of her pants.

He is moaning now, his fingers clawing the cupboard door. She touches the head of his co*ck to the seam of her labia, wriggles until they part and she can feel him, slick and hot and bulbous, against her folds. She is dry; she has no desire of her own, not for this, not after Ed. This is a gift, and she gives it gladly.

She rises on her toes as she moves his head down to her entrance. It hardly matters that she is unaroused, because he is leaking so much precum. Once his tip is notched against her opening, she lifts her hands and grips his biceps, tears running down the back of her throat. She swallows them.

“There,” she whispers.

He wails as he jerks his hips, a strangled, bewildered sound that drowns out the whimper of pain she gives as he breaches her. His head stops half inside her, her entrance stretched around the widest point, pain travelling through her pelvis and up her spine. She tips her head back, one arm around Daryl’s neck as she tries to stay on her feet, and the cupboard rattles as he thrusts again, the head of his co*ck fully inside her in a blinding burst of pain, her entrance spasming as it closes on the top of his shaft, sealing him inside her. Her muscles stiffen in anticipation of worse ahead. But he is coming already, only just inside her body, his face wet against her neck as he spurts deep into her, his heat reaching past walls that are struggling to clamp shut and prevent him from entering her any further. His shaft pulses on and on in the gap between her thighs, the force of his org*sm frightening her, and his hips jerk as the head of his co*ck seems to swell inside her. She gulps back a sob he penetrates her half an inch further, his passage eased by cum. She aches in a way Ed could never make her ache with his co*ck alone, her pelvis burning, her hips throbbing with the stretch. Daryl is making a rhythmic, wordless sound,ah ah ah, and the way he shivers, the tears she can feel on his face, make it easier to ignore the pain and fright of his size, to focus on comforting him. She holds him against her as he sags, still twitching just inside her, shuddering as he spills the last of his release, and she shushes him when his moans turn to a hoarse sob, one of his hands lifted to cup her face. His thumb drifts across her lower lip, and she turns away from his touch.

“See?” she whispers, her mouth against his ear. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

xxxx

She leads him to the bed afterwards. He holds his pants up with one hand, speechless, overwhelmed. She has already covered herself, slid her pants up while he was still pinning her to the cupboard with his weight. He barely caught a glimpse of silver curls, the pale, scarred flesh of her thighs, as she tugged down her underwear, and then it was all sensation, the softness of her folds against the head of his co*ck, the tiny place where her body opened and the way her back arched as he penetrated her. He should be humiliated for coming when he was barely inside her, but he is too stunned to be embarrassed yet. She was so tight around his co*ck that it hurt, and yet it felt better than any of the fumbling one-night stands in his past. It wasCarol.

He sleeps, passes out as she arranges a blanket around his shoulders. When he wakes, the air in the RV is damp and cold, tendrils of fog curling in the windows, the sunshine gone and evening almost here. He is alone in the bed, as he was when Carol drew the blanket over him, and he sits up abruptly. She is at the table, looking out the window, in clean clothes. She must have washed while he slept; the RV smells faintly of soap, and there is a gallon of water from the crate on the counter. The thought of her cleaning his cum from between her legs makes him blush, and he pulls his knees up, resting his arms on them as he studies her.

She does not react to the sound of his movements. The last of the daylight, filtered through mist, translates her face into shades of white and grey. He knows the shape of her profile by heart, the tilt of her nose and the curve of her upper lip. He wants her with an intensity that is almost unbearable, even now.Can’t be here.

“Sophia used to—she wouldn’t leave my side. Afterwards.” Carol doesn’t look away from the window, the words quiet and thoughtful. “She was so distressed by—by how I was.” Her throat moves as she swallows, and he closes his eyes for a moment as he thinks of his face against her skin, her fingers on his co*ck.

“Hard seein’ you like that,” he says roughly. She looks down at the table.

“I know.” She runs a finger over the vinyl, and he bites the inside of his cheek. The hope in him is like a balloon, pressing outwards, his voice squeezing past it.

“Carol—”

She looks up, at his face. The shadows under her eyes are bluish, and the clarity of her gaze stops him from speaking, unease leaden in his belly.

“I just wanted to give you what you needed,” she whispers. “Can we—can we let it be what it was?”

His heart collapses inwards, folding up like a letter returned to its envelope. Moving to the end of the bed, he places his feet on the floor as he stares at her.

“An’ what’s that?” he makes himself ask. She smiles, a tiny, grotesque effort, her eyes bright with unshed tears, and shrugs. Daryl rocks forward, inhaling sharply, lowering his gaze to the floor. There is a roaring in his ears that makes it hard to think, as though the mist has made its way into his head and become sound inside the chamber of his skull.

“You…eaten?” he asks with excruciating slowness, because if he says anything else he will cry. “Had…had some water?”

“I’m sorry.” The shame in her apology outweighs any wrong she has ever done him, and yet he will not accept it, not when he knows how her body feels around his, not when he has felt her stroke his co*ck, when he has trembled and wept in her arms as he spills inside her. He lifts his head and looks at her, the liquid grey of her eyes and the quiver of her chin. And he cools his misery determinedly into fury, out of a habit almost as old as he is.

“Sorry for what?” he asks, his voice hard. “Sorry for bein’ claustrophobic ‘cause Ed used to lock you up?” He breathes in the cold air, lets it spread through him. “Or sorry for lettin’ me f*ck you?”

She flinches, and her hands move on the tabletop, her fingers agitated. He cannot separate the rage in him from the desire, the need to put his fingers inside her where she is tight and hot, to open her shirt and taste her breasts, to grasp her ass and bite her neck. She didn’t let him touch any part of her. She didn’twanthim to.

“Said you knew what I needed,” he continues hoarsely. “What’s that then? A hole to f*ck? Your pity?”

“Comfort,” she says, a faint note of defiance in her voice, and holds onto the edge of the table as though to ground herself. “To know I was—to know I was okay.”

“An’ what didyouneed?” he asks, and stands up, crossing to the table. She looks up at him, her eyes blurred.

“You to stay,” she whispers. He shakes his head as though trying to dislodge water from his ears, his face pulling into a disbelieving sneer, and she turns to the window, covering her eyes with one hand, her teeth catching her lower lip as she struggles not to cry. He can see the scratches on her fingertips where she scraped at the door of the bunker. The fight goes out of him, leaving him hollow. Sliding into the seat opposite her, he rests his hands on the table and stares at his knuckles, dry and scarred.

“Should be restin’,” he says dully. She takes a shaky breath, wiping her eyes and dropping her hands to her lap.

“You have to—you have to understand, Daryl, that part of me—” Her voice is brittle, fissures between the syllables. “It’sgone, it’s—” She stops, her head bowed. “He took it from me.” Looking up, she meets his eyes, her gaze level despite the tremor in her voice. “I can’t be—like other women. Not anymore. But that—” She gestures towards the cupboard against which he took her. “I can give you that.” Her face softens. “You don’t want the rest of me, Daryl, the screwed-up parts.”

“You don’t know a goddamnthingabout what I want,” he snaps. “Or what I need.”

The words scrape his throat, his voice loud and defensive. Near the gate, across the compound from the RV, a flashlight shines in the fog: the watchman.

“Don’t I?” The question is so gentle, a slip of silk between his fingers, a petal brushing the back of his hand. Crimson-faced, he looks down at the table and curls his hands into fists.

“Ain’t ever tried—I ain’t ever asked for that,” he says savagely. “Never. Been your friend. Tried not to—to be like him.” To his mortification, his eyes fill with tears.

“And you’re nothing like him,” she whispers. He looks up at her furiously.

“Why’d you treat me like him then? Givin’ me your puss* like I might take it for myself if you didn’t?”

She blanches. “That’s not—I wasn’t—”

He swipes at his face, his knuckles coming away wet. In bed with her sometimes, when she is asleep and he is listening to her breathe, he has imagined—as a game, a fantasy—telling her how much he cares for her. How much he longs for her. In those moments, half-asleep, he has granted his imaginary self all the courage and confidence he lacks in real life. Sitting opposite her now, he understands that boldness can come from despair as well as triumph; that humiliation, the loss of whatever frail thing has existed between them, has stripped him of his hesitation.

“What I need ain’t that,” he says. “It ain’t f*ckin’ you and hurtin’ you ‘cause you don’t even want it.” She flushes, her hands twisting in her lap, and he lifts his chin and wills himself not to cry more openly. “What I need is—is—” His voice breaks, and he swallows convulsively. “I—care ‘bout you. You’re so smart an’ so beautiful, an’ so—an’ I ain’t no one, I know that, I ain’t—” His words are tripping over each other, his voice frantic. He takes a deep breath and stops. Carol has lowered her eyes, hardly seems to be breathing.

“I don’t care what he—what hetook.” Daryl shakes his head and opens one fist, reaching across the table, his fingertips stopping at its edge. Carol doesn’t move. “Person you are is more than I deserve.”

“What are you saying?” she asks without looking up. He leans back, defeated. His arms ache with the memory of her weight as he carried her out the bunker.

“Sayin’ you were right,” he tells her quietly. “‘Bout me needin’ you. Wantin’ you.” He ducks his head. “But not like that, not—not if you don’t want me back.”

The words slice through his chest, his throat, his mouth, like a blade, and once they are spoken, he sits exposed before her. There is nothing more to say. Carol’s shoulders heave, but she is silent, her eyes downcast. Her skin looks papery and thin. She should be sleeping, recovering, not listening to him struggle for words.

After a moment, restless with dread, Daryl gets up and goes to the counter, taking two mugs down, rummaging in the crate for a thermos of coffee. His hands shake as he scoops sugar into the mugs. Her thighs were so soft, so warm, her fingers so slender on his shaft. There was a moment when he didn’t think he could fit inside her, and then her body gave way a little and a little more.

“I don’t really know how to want anymore.” Her voice drifts to him, expressionless, opaque. He looks down at the mugs in front of him. “For years all I wanted was to get away from Ed. And now I have.”

He takes the coffee to the table, sliding a mug to her across the vinyl. She nods in thanks and glances out the window. The entrance building is a vague shape in the fog. She wraps her hands around her mug, and he looks away quickly.

“But this, you. I can’t—I don’t know how to want that.” She hesitates, and her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not a whole person, Daryl. I haven’t been for a long time. And I have Sophia, and—”

“An’ I ain’t the kinda man you’d choose,” he finishes for her, fighting to keep the bitterness from his voice. His gaze slides to hers. The blue of her eyes is clear as crystal.

“You’re exactly who I’d choose,” she says softly. He stares at her. “But why should you be with someone who can’t even—can’t even let you look at all of her?” She presses her lips together, steadying herself. “Can’t let you touch her in the—the ways you want to.” Her eyes darken with what he knows is fear, and he remembers sitting on a log with Sophia, listening to Ed grunt and murmur in the tent; remembers sitting on the porch steps at the farm, listening to Carol’s limping step approach. He shakes his head at her wordlessly, and she lays a hand on the table, palm up, her fingers limp. The tips are red and swollen. She stares down at them.

“I wanna—” He swallows thickly. “All of it, I want it with you.” Her mouth turns down at the corners, and she blinks rapidly. “But what I want most ain’t—it ain’t f*ckin’. It’s…it’s bein’ close to you. Talkin’ an’—an’ holdin’ you an’…listenin’ to you.” He reaches across and slides his fingers into her hand, careful not to bump her injuries. She looks up at him, doubt in her eyes, and he reddens, the words coming in chaos, desperation dragging them from him. “On the road, at night, when I’d listen to him—what he did to you. An’ that night I saw him, when he—your shoulder, an’ he was hurtin’ you so bad, an’—” Daryl takes his hand from hers and rubs his face. “No matter how much I want you, what matters most, what’ll always matter to me, is that you ain’t sad. Ain’t hurtin’. Ain’t wakin’ up scared an’ alone.” He leans forward, placing his hands on either side of hers without touching it. “Please. Please, Carol. Let me try.”

She lifts her hand and caresses his left thumb, stroking it with hot fingertips, following the bone to the back of his hand and gliding her fingers across his knuckles. Her face is slack, her movements dazed. He sits very still, watching her, and when she brings her other hand from her lap and reaches for his, he gives a shaky, audible exhale.

“Are you sure?” She sounds distant, otherworldly, like some fey creature casting a spell. Slowly, she raises her eyes to his, and he nods, biting his lip, so much grief and terror waiting inside him that he cannot speak for fear of letting it out. She smiles, a heartbreaking, fragile smile that holds as much sorrow as it does joy. “Okay,” she whispers. “Yes.”

Chapter 27

Chapter Text

There is an awkwardness between them, as they lie facing one another, that he has not felt for a long time. They are not touching; he is not sure how to touch her now, or if she will allow it. He is hungry for her in a new way, a worse way, and as he gazes at her—her face quiet, her eyes patient—he feels, in flashes, the way her body took him in, the grip of it as he came. He reddens, though neither of them has spoken, and Carol reaches out and touches his cheek lightly, withdrawing her hand before he can take it in his.

“You should—I should tell you,” she says, her voice low and gentle. “You don’t have to—there’s no need to worry.” Her eyes shine suddenly, and she swallows. “I can’t, uh, I can’t fall pregnant.”

His blush deepens. It had not even occurred to him. He came so quickly, barely inside her. He opens his mouth, his next breath a stutter, knowing he should say something but uncertain what it is.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, seeing his mortification, and the phrase resonates in him, finding its echo. He is pressing her against the cupboard again, pushing into her as she trembles, her muscles taut. His co*ck stirs, and he clears his throat.

“How come?” he asks, to shift his thoughts from her body. “Bein’ pregnant, I mean, how come you—”

He stops. It is a stupid question, and if he had given it a moment’s consideration, he wouldn’t have asked. She lowers her eyes and smooths the palm of one hand over the comforter.

“I was pregnant once, after Sophia.” She bites her lip. “Made it to just a few—a few months.” She meets his eyes. “Ed didn’t want the baby and he—he tried to—he made sure I miscarried.” She blinks, her pupils flaring with some years old shock, and Daryl shifts closer to her.

“Ain’t gotta tell me,” he murmurs regretfully. “Shouldna asked.”

She fumbles for his hand, not taking her eyes from his. Her fingers are cool. He holds them carefully.

“The miscarriage was complicated,” she says. “They had to—they couldn’t—”

She trails off. He lifts her hand to his face, and holds the back of it to his cheek, closing his eyes. She sighs, and slowly, hesitantly, he brings her knuckles to his lips, in a kiss that is barely a kiss, a second of contact before he rests their hands on the bed between them. She is watching him when he opens his eyes, her cheeks pink.

“You tell me,” he says roughly, forcefully. “You tell me if I do somethin’ that ain’t okay.”

She nods, her cheek rubbing the pillow.

“And you do the same,” she replies softly. “I only know one way to do…this.”

“Don’t know any,” he says bluntly, and is immediately flustered by his honesty. She studies him, and he swipes his thumb across her wrist, a nervous tic.

“You’ve never had someone?” she asks. There is no amusem*nt in her voice, no mockery. Only an interest that seems, if anything, kind. “A girlfriend?”

“Nah.” He scowls, and looks at their joined hands to avoid her gaze. “Jus’…hookups. A couple.” His cheeks flame. “Guess you could tell.”

She moves closer to him then, releasing his hand and reaching for his face, her palms against his cheeks. He freezes, thinks for a second she is going to kiss his mouth, and his co*ck twitches. But she lifts her chin, bends his head, and kisses his forehead instead, a soft, dry press of her lips that drains the tension from him, the humiliation and fear. She stays there, her breath warm at his hairline, for a few seconds longer, before sliding her hands from his skin and settling back onto her pillow.

It is dark outside now, the interior of the RV icy because of the open windows. They have not spoken about going back into the bunker. There are blankets stored in the overhead cupboards which Daryl can fetch down. He would sleep in the winter snow with her if it was what she needed, dig them a shelter and heat her with his body.

“Was real proud of you,” he says after they have been silent for a while. She frowns.

“When?”

“Earlier.” He misses her hand in his and touches a fingertip to the soft wisps of hair at her temple. “When you opened the bunker.”

She looks past his shoulder, her expression hardening, her voice dismissive when she replies.

“A normal person would’ve been out in minutes. With much less drama.”

“Anyone else who’d gone through the sh*t you have,” he replies without hesitation. “Would still be in there.” He frowns. “Give yourself some credit.”

She considers him, her brow creased, and he drifts a finger across the furrow before tucking his hands into his armpits. He cannot stop touching her, every second of contact with her skin sending a current of desire through him.

“You were right,” she says. “What you said to me. It felt like Ed was in there with me.” She gives him a tight smile. “Did Sophia hear me? Over the radio?”

“No,” he says quietly. “She only came down after the battery died. Saw me fetch you out.”

Carol jerks her head in a nod, closing her eyes, and Daryl clears his throat again, wets his lips, tries to make himself say the necessary words.

“You okay?” The timbre of his voice is harsh, as though he has smoked half a pack of cigarettes. “I mean, after—” He is rock hard, afraid to move lest the friction of his jeans arouses him further. “You okay? I, I hurt you?”

She opens her eyes, soft and sky blue, brighter above the shadows on her skin than they might be without them. Her face is sombre, but her voice is kind.

“You don’t have to worry about me, about that, Daryl.” She flushes faintly, and a wry note enters her voice, which fails to distract him from the shame in her eyes. “It doesn’t—Ed, he taught me—”

She is crying suddenly, her face crumpling, a hand concealing her from his gaze. He moves so that his head is on her pillow, and pulls her into his arms, holding her carefully, keeping his erection away from her. She cries quietly, her shoulders shaking against his arm.

“I don’t want to talk about him all the time,” she says when she can speak, her voice muffled by his chest. “You shouldn’t have to hear me talk about him. But—but so much of what I am is because of him.”

“You say what you gotta say.” Daryl’s biceps flex around her, and he remembers Ed’s hands on her head as he thrust into her throat, the sound of her choking on his co*ck. “You tell me. That’s all that matters. You tell me.”

She doesn’t reply, but settles more comfortably into his arms, curling against his body. His erection has withered at the thought of Ed, his lust dispersed, and all he wants is to comfort her. As the tension in her body eases, she brings a hand to the base of Daryl’s throat, above his shirt, her fingers tracing the hollow there.

“I meant what I said,” she murmurs after a while. “You need to know that.”

“Meant what?” He has never been touched as delicately as she is touching him right now, the movement of her fingers like a feather across his skin.

“I can give that to you,” she says quietly. “I want to—to do that for you.”

He thinks of her guiding his co*ck between her thighs, the way she worked her labia open around his tip, the way she positioned him at her entrance.There. He exhales, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his face into her hair.

“Don’t wanna take from you.” It is the truth, but it also a lie. He wants to f*ck her until he can’t see straight, mould her body to his, grab her hips and slam into her and hear her cry out.

“You can’t take what I’m giving willingly, Daryl.” She finds his cheek with her hand and grazes her thumb along his cheekbone. “Okay?” Pulling away, she looks up at him, her face suddenly anxious. “Okay?”

Ed taught me. He does not want to think about what that means, what she was made to give her husband. But he begins to understand that what she is offering him is infinitely precious: not the meagre leftovers she imagines, but far more than any woman has given Daryl before. His eyes sting, and a flicker of confusion crosses her face as she looks up at him.

“‘Kay.” He leans down, and senses the moment she stiffens, her eyes widening as she anticipates his mouth on hers. There is no desire in her response; only dread and resignation. He pauses, and then ever so slowly brings his lips to her hairline, kissing it softly, hearing her release a slow breath as he does so.

No one has disturbed them since T-Dog brought the crate. The property is quiet now, the sounds of night creatures muted, and the light through the windows of the RV is eerie, moonlight leaking through the fog from time to time. Carol pulls a blanket over them and turns in his arms, so she has her back to his chest. He is startled by how snugly she lies against him. He puts his arm across her belly as he did this afternoon, and she lays her arm on top of it, her fingers between his. This part is easy, he thinks. This part is safe.

“When you first started sleeping in my room,” she murmurs. “I wanted so badly to be held. Like this.” She hesitates, and adds, her voice hushed, “By you.”

He pulls her closer still.

“Was afraid,” he tells her gruffly. “Just bein’ in the same bed as you.”

“Yet you stayed.” She turns her face to glance at him, a wan smile on her lips. “Even after Sophia yelled at you.”

Sophia. He shifts, restless with worry. He reassured her just a few weeks ago that he was Carol’s friend and nothing more.

“She’ll be fine.” Carol faces forward again, her hair tickling his chin, her fingers stroking his where they rest against her stomach. “She’ll be fine, Daryl.”

He grunts. They are cosy under the thick, soft blanket, despite the chill in the RV, and as he gets sleepier, as her breathing evens out, he becomes aware of her waist, the swell of her ass, the crease between her buttocks. He starts to get hard, his co*ck slotting against her, and he jerks his hips back, opening a space between her body and his.

“You don’t have to,” Carol whispers. He lifts his arm from her belly in panic, hovering it there instead of touching the plane of her abdominal muscles, and a second later he rolls onto his back, willing himself not to think of her breasts, her skin, her mouth. Carol turns to face him, and he rests a forearm over his eyes, refusing to look at her.

Her hand is deft on his button and fly, no fumbling this time, and when his co*ck springs free, he stifles a moan and turns his head away from her. Her hand silences him, thin fingers reaching under the waistband of his boxers, her hand cooling his hot flesh. He is breathing loudly, raggedly. She strokes from the base of his co*ck to the head, and then reaches lower and cradles his balls gently, her thumb sweeping over them.

“Want you so bad.” His voice is choked, his mind so far ahead of her hand that he is shaking with the effort of restraining himself. Her fingers hesitate on his skin, and her brow comes to rest against his shoulder, her breath warm through the fabric of his shirt. He makes a short, despairing sound, his hips bucking. Slowly, her fingers drift up his shaft, her thumb gliding through the precum on the head of his co*ck. It is nothing like when he jerks off; her touch is so gentle, so careful, and yet he is close to coming already.

Ed taught me.Ed taught me.

Daryl grits his teeth and reaches down, shaping his hand around hers so that for a dizzying second, they are both holding his co*ck, his fingers dwarfing hers, fresh precum spilling from the head. He eases his fingertips under hers, hears her sharp breath as he touches her injuries, and then he draws her hand out of his boxers and to his chest, flattening it over his heart. She lies unmoving, and he tries to slow his breathing, pushing down into the bed to keep from thrusting at the air, waiting for his erection to subside. It is agony, and it is only her next words that keep him from coming untouched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. His desire fades into wretchedness.

“Nah.” He brings her hand to his face, cradling it against his cheek. He can smell himself on her, the realisation jolting him into a strange, possessive rage at the man who had her for so many years and made her suffer through all of them. “You ain’t gotta be sorry.” His fury at Ed gives his voice a wild, rough edge. She is watching him with wide eyes. “You’re hurt an’ I’m lyin’ here lettin’ you—”

He turns abruptly onto his side, facing her. In his grasp, her hand is limp and pliant, and he studies it, the red scratches and torn nails, the bruising beginning on her forefinger. Slowly, he brushes his lips across her fingertips, warming them with his breath, and when she allows it, he kisses her knuckles one by one. Her gaze is limpid, curious, as though, like him, she has never been touched so lightly, so insignificantly, with so little force.

He rests her fingers against his lips and looks at her, searching for fear or revulsion. Seeing neither, he closes his eyes and darts his tongue across the tips, tastes salt and metal. She whispers his name like a question as he takes her middle finger in his mouth. He sucks it gently, driven by some unfamiliar instinct, curling his tongue along the length of it. It tastes of blood and sweat and Carol, and when he takes it deeper into his mouth, his head moving closer to her hand, another finger is waiting, bent so the trembling tip brushes his lips.

He does not open his eyes, does not want to scare her by noticing her interest. He parts his lips a little and licks her second fingertip, and then there are two fingers in his mouth, and he suckles them both, his co*ck stirring again. He is careful not to nick her with his teeth, to keep his mouth loose, teasing her skin with his tongue. The bones of her hand are sharp and stiff between his fingers, but gradually they stop twitching and flexing, and he shifts his head so her wrist lies on the pillow beside his mouth as he sucks.

He knows the moment she drifts off, though he is not expecting it. He has not opened his eyes once, all his focus on the broken shells of her nails against his palate, the whorls of her fingertips on the back of his tongue. But when her fingers slide against his lower lip, slack and wet, he blinks. Her eyes are closed, her cheeks flushed, her other hand—unnoticed by him until now—holding the edge of his shirt as she sleeps.

xxxx

Rick arrives at the door of the RV when the night is at its darkest, their breath forming clouds in the frigid air as his knock startles them awake. Daryl gets up to go to the door, and Carol lies looking at her hand on his pillow, feeling the heat of his tongue on her fingers. She teetered at the edge of something as she fell asleep, Daryl’s mouth so warm around her fingers, his lips dry against her knuckles. The rhythm of his sucking rocked her into an easy, loose-limbed slumber, heavy with contentment.

“She wanted to come up.” Rick sounds exhausted. “Be with her mom.”

Daryl says something inaudible, and Carol sits up as Sophia appears at the foot of the bed, clambering onto it and falling into her mother’s arms. The girl is bundled in a blanket, but her cheeks are icy. She lets Carol pull her down, under a pile of covers, and she attaches herself to her mother, all skinny limbs and pointed knees and elbows.

“Are you warm enough?” Carol murmurs. Sophia nods, her cheek against Carol’s breast, and lifts her face to peer anxiously at her mother. She doesn’t say anything, but she examines Carol, lifting a hand and touching her jaw. Carol smiles at her and holds her gaze.I’m fine. The girl’s fingers trace her lips and brush her cheek, Sophia’s other hand on her chest just above her shirt. Skin to skin, Carol thinks, like newborns need.

Daryl has not returned to the bed, and in the silence, as her daughter’s eyes well up, Carol hears the faint flick of his lighter from the steps of the RV. She thumbs a tear off the child’s cheek, and covers Sophia’s hand with her own, struggling to keep her voice level.

“I’m sorry you were worried about me, sweetheart.”

Sophia places her cheek beside Carol’s hand, her next words muffled. “It wasn’t like when Daddy used to lock you up.” She hesitates, hiccuping softly. “I couldn’t hear you crying and no one hurt you but still—still I—”

“Yeah.” Carol squeezes the small hand in hers. “I know.” She bends her head to her daughter’s. “Thank you for telling Daryl to open the windows.”

“He took care of you?” There is only the thinnest sliver of doubt in the question, the relic of a distrust Carol fears Sophia might never altogether lose.

“Always,” Carol murmurs.

The girl exhales, her relief clear. There is silence from the trailer steps, and Carol wonders whether Daryl has heard any of their conversation.

“Sleep, Soph,” she says, brushing her daughter’s hair off her cheek. “Do you want me to close the windows for now? It’s cold in here.” She ignores the skitter of fear beneath her skin at the thought of being shut in the camper.

“Uh-uh.” Sophia sniffs, nestling her face into the pillow. “‘S fine.”

When she is asleep and Daryl is still not back inside, Carol climbs out of bed and goes to the doorway. He is sitting on the bottom step, the smoke from his cigarette melting into the mist. The condensation clings to him, a white wreath around his damp hair, a veil across his shoulders. She sits on the top step, her knees brushing his back, and he exhales, the scent of tobacco sweet and earthy.

Leaning forward, she reaches for the cigarette in his hand, and he passes it to her without comment. She considers it for a moment, the mark on one end where he has bitten, and then puts it to her lips, inhaling slowly. She suppresses a cough as her lungs fill, and she turns her head to exhale, shutting her eyes and tasting the acrid smoke on her tongue. Daryl takes the cigarette when she passes it forward.

“I wasn’t allowed to smoke,” she muses. “But sometimes I’d hide out back and have one while Ed was at work. I kept a box hidden in the kitchen.”

Daryl grunts, stick hanging from the corner of his mouth, and she looks down at the fingers he kissed earlier. It is after 2am, and she is drunk with exhaustion.

“He ever catch you?” The question is placid, verging on disinterested, but tension ripples across his shoulders, his back suddenly hard against her knees. She gives a short laugh.

“Yes.” She braces for the memories and closes her eyes as they rush through her, glancing off the peace of this moment. “And I never did it again.” She couldn’t stand the smell of tobacco for months after that, avoided fire of any kind, threw away the scented candles in the bathrooms.

Daryl passes the cigarette over his shoulder without turning around, and she takes it. The end is more noticeably bitten, and the intimacy of putting her mouth where his has been makes her lightheaded as she takes a drag. This inhalation is easier, the smoke burning like honey in her throat.

“How old were you when you started smoking?” she asks, handing the stick back to Daryl. He shrugs, flicking the end so the ash dissolves in the fog.

“First one when I was nine,” he says. “Birthday present from Merle.”

She thinks of Sophia at nine, gap-toothed and even shyer than she is now, preoccupied with dolls.

“What did he give you when you turned ten?” she asks half-humorously, and Daryl is suddenly still, his fingers curved and the cigarette glowing between them. After a moment, he ducks his head, his eyes on the dirt. His hair falls forward, the backs of his ears darkening in the gloom. She has made him ashamed.

“Sorry,” she says softly. “It’s none of my business.”

“Wanted a catapult,” he mutters. “Got a magazine instead.”

“A m—” She stops, and he brings the cigarette to his lips. “Oh.”

“Merle didn’ see nothin’ wrong with it.” There is a defensive note in Daryl’s voice. “Was big brother sh*t to him.”

Carol is silent. Back at the quarry, Merle was, to her, no more than another version of Ed—less polished, less interested in concealing his worst qualities. She avoided the older Dixon and saw that Sophia did too. But she remembers Daryl’s rage and misery when he learnt of his brother’s abandonment, and she heard from Lori how he howled on the rooftop where they found Merle’s hand.

“You miss him,” she says slowly to Daryl. She wishes she had the courage to touch him, but even now, even after what they did in the RV, she is self-conscious about taking liberties. He seems remote once more, likely to flinch and glare at her if she startles him.

“Sometimes,” he replies blandly.

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs and grinds out the cigarette on the step beside him. His fingers are blunt and broad, his nails chewed to the quick, but she has seen him fletch crossbow bolts and scale fish, noticed the unexpected elegance he brings to those tasks. She wonders what it would be like to be touched by him the way he clearly wants to touch her, and squashes the thought immediately. Ed had large hands too, with sharp nails, fingers that bruised her inside and out.

Daryl turns, looking at her for the first time since she came outside.

“Can bring your things up tomorrow if you like,” he says. “If you’re gonna stay here a while.”

She glances towards the hazy form of the bunker entrance, her chest closing, and folds her arms across her stomach, hunching her shoulders.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to get what I need for myself.” She wishes she hadn’t smoked the cigarette. “And I won’t stay up here for long, a few days, maybe, just until I—until—”

“Hey.” He gives a little shake of his head. “Ain’t no rush to go back down.” He gestures in the direction of the gate. “Got someone on watch. Only issue is the cold.”

“I don’t mind the cold.” She digs her nails into her elbows. “Will you—can you—stay with me?” Heat climbs her chest.

“Course.” He looks away. “If you want.”

“Yes. Please.” She watches him turn away again, and thinks of his co*ck, the speed with which he was ready again after coming inside her, the hunger she has sensed in him—as though he has been keeping it at bay all this time and now no longer can. It frightens her, his want, because it is for a version of her that iswrong, and because if he sees her as she is his desire might turn to resentment. To rage. She is sore between her legs, from his girth alone. If he wanted to, he could hurt her badly.

She stands up, and goes back into the RV, groping for the counter and the table in the deeper darkness of the interior, feeling her way towards the bed.

“Carol?” His voice is soft. He cried when he came. Didn’t try to touch her until his thumb grazed her lower lip. She turns. “I do somethin’? Say somethin’ wrong?” His face is invisible to her. “That magazine, I traded it for smokes. Didn’ know what the hell it was for at ten.” He shifts awkwardly on his feet. “Ain’t—I ain’t like Merle. I swear it.”

She walks to him before she has time to hesitate, and hugs him. His shirt is damp from the mist. He held her hand over his heart on the bed, his face contorted as he fought his own relief, and he blamed himself for letting her try to pleasure him. She burrows her forehead into his chest.

“I’m hard work,” she whispers. It is something Ed used to tell her, and she has never believed it more than she does in this moment. “You’ll have to be patient with me and I’m sorry for that.”

He folds her into his arms.

“No you ain’t.” There is a current of sadness in his voice. “An’ you’re gonna have to be patient with me too.”

It is not the same, she thinks as she closes her eyes. He requires patience for his eagerness, if anything. She requires it for her reluctance, for what should be there but isn’t, and for whatever offensive behaviour she learnt while married to Ed. It is not the same at all.

“I’ll take the floor,” Daryl murmurs into her hair, and releases her. She glances at the bed.

“There’s room for three of us. It’ll be warmer, too.”

He bridles, but she insists, cuddling up to her daughter and making space for Daryl behind her. Between man and child, she is cosy, and as Daryl drifts off, he relaxes, his hand tentative at her waist, his breath on the back of her neck. Carol savours their closeness, hardly daring to imagine that this might become habit. And she fights sleep for a little longer, because beyond the threshold of consciousness, Ed waits to remind her of how little she deserves this; of how foolish she is to think she might hold onto it.

Chapter 28

Chapter Text

The forest has retained traces of last night’s fog, draped like strips of silk over branches and bushes. Daryl’s boots sink into the earth, and he sets off a cascade of droplets each time his crossbow brushes a leaf or twig. His sleeves are spattered with dark patches of water, the shoulders of his leather vest slick. The branches overhead are outlined starkly against a grey sky, and the dirt is carpeted with pine needles, and rust-coloured leaves shiny with condensation.

He is walking parallel to the road, half a mile from the asphalt, exploring an area he hasn’t visited before. In the kitchen this morning, when he went downstairs to get coffee, Hershel told him that Dale had heard a car on the road last night. It passed in darkness, too quick for him to reach the gate and see it, and likely it was just a traveller heading for the coast. But it has unsettled everyone; it is the first sign of other, living people they have seen since arriving here.

Daryl was planning to head out anyway, needing to be alone for a few hours. He does not want to deal with the smirks and questions of the others, with Andrea’s teasing and Shane’s mockery, and neither can he be with Carol all day. He wants, for a time, to think of something other than sex, and it was clear from the moment he awoke this morning that he couldn’t do that in her company.He is hungover from lack of sleep and yesterday’s adrenaline, but the chill and the fresh air, the silence, keep his headache at bay.

On the trunk of an oak up ahead is the sunshine-yellow frill of a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom. The surface of the fungi, when he works it loose from the bark, is velvety and damp, a faint lemon scent on his fingers after he slips the find into his bag. The group is craving fresh vegetables, tired of salty, mushy offerings from cans. Winter is only going to make things worse in that respect, and Maggie’s attempts to grow indoor vegetables have succeeded only with some spindly, pale herbs that she carries upstairs a couple of times a week for sunlight.

Leaning against the oak, he takes a bottle of water out his pack and drinks. Carol seemed anxious when they woke, her routine thrown by yesterday’s ordeal, her need to stay aboveground keeping her from making breakfast and doing her usual chores. She was eating with Sophia in the RV when Daryl left. He hopes she has slept some more since. Her face was porcelain white this morning, the darker skin under her eyes fine and fragile as ash. He thinks of her laboured breathing over the radio and pushes himself off the trunk, striding onwards.

The land slopes gently upwards as he gets further from the bunker. He passes the body of a hiker, seated against a rock with his backpack still on. A sturdy hiking stick is sunk into the dirt beside him. Moss has overgrown the corpse’s clothes, and the man’s skin is dark and leathery where it still clings to his skull. There is no indication of how he died, who put him down; but he has been here for months, that much is clear. When Daryl prises up one end and pulls, the walking stick comes free of the mud with a soft sucking sound. He uses it to prod the corpse forward until it bends at the waist, and he unzips the backpack. Half a pack of cigarettes, a mouldy waterproof and murky water bottle, a plastic bag writhing with maggots—the remnants of a sandwich. Disgusted, Daryl steps away, taking the stick with him.

The trees thin out as he climbs, the pearlescent light brightening gradually until he emerges into a meadow, wild mustard plants growing in patches between scrubby grass and bushes. Daryl gathers some of the greens, which he hasn’t seen since they drove through farmland to reach the bunker, and wonders whether there is more cultivated land on the other side of this hill. The group has been foolish not to explore what lies beyond the bunker, their only travel taking them back towards Savannah. There could be more farmland worth exploring, and if not, further on is the sea. He will suggest a trip to Rick, for fresh fish if they can find it, shellfish at the very least.

He is crouching beside his pack when he hears the walker approach, with the distinctive, lurching step that tells him at once it is one of the dead. Zipping the greens into his bag, he draws his knife and turns, hesitating with his arm half-raised as he waits for the corpse to notice him. It is a man, wandering aimlessly across the meadow from the trees on the far side, its jaws working, its feet dragging in the wiry vegetation. Squinting at it, Daryl adjusts his grip on the knife, and frowns. Dressed in chinos and a shirt, spectacles on a cord around his neck, the man is the freshest walker Daryl has seen for weeks. The bloodstain on his shirt is red and jewel bright, his skin smooth over plump cheeks, his hair recently washed. That the man was deliberately killed is clear from the wound on his chest. Killed by someone who didn’t bother to put him down.

Daryl goes to meet the walker, switching out his knife for the crossbow, preferring the force of a bolt for a skull still so hard. He shoots the man from close range, his body dropping into a bed of yellow blossoms, his legs bent awkwardly beneath him. Daryl yanks the bolt free, examining the man’s face: middle-aged, unremarkable. One of the lenses of his glasses is cracked, and there is a pen in his shirt pocket. He looks like an office worker, not a survivalist; but Daryl would wager he’s been dead only a day or so. Unsettled, the hunter stands up and scans the tree line on the far side of the meadow. There are only birds, a squirrel clawing its way up the trunk of a pine. But beyond it, in the middle distance, the smooth, watercolour grey of the sky is interrupted by a dark smudge: smoke, hanging above the skeletal reach of the trees.

xxxx

Andrea is inside the RV as soon as Sophia has left Carol after breakfast. The girl is going into the bunker to find Carl and—hopefully—do some schoolwork. She is cheerful this morning despite her broken night, and seemed pleased to find Daryl around when she woke up. Carol tried to match her daughter’s mood during breakfast, but she feels battered today, her muscles aching and her eyes dry and scratchy. She should be happy, she thinks, after her conversation with Daryl. But her choice to be with him is tangled up with doubt and fear, with the conviction that he will change his mind eventually; that getting to know her better will cure him of both his desire and his affection for her. She is not sorry she said yes—she cannot be sorry, not when she cares for him as she does, not when he is so determinedly gentle and kind. But she cannot simply be happy, either.

“I packed you some stuff for your stay up here.” Andrea comes into the campervan uninvited, slinging a duffel bag onto the table. Carol, rinsing mugs at the tiny sink, startles, twisting round.

“Thanks,” she says. “I haven’t actually asked Dale whether—”

Andrea waves a hand dismissively. “Dale’s delighted this thing can be of use even now.” The blonde sidles over to the counter and takes up a dishrag, drying a mug as Carol resumes washing. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine. Thanks.” Carol shoots her friend a quick smile and looks down at the water in the sink again. “Sorry for causing such a scene yesterday.” She sponges the inside of a mug and puts it carefully on the rack.

“The only person who caused a scene was Daryl,” Andrea says archly, and Carol flushes, keep her eyes fixed on her task. “We were all a little stunned.”

“He helped me,” Carol says defensively. “He talked me through it.”

“Mmm.” Andrea finishes drying another mug and hangs it on its hook below the cupboard. “Nearly bit my head off when I got between you and the exit.”

Carol feels the other woman’s eyes on her, and fumbles for the plug to let the water out.

“I feel like an idiot now,” Andrea says, dropping the dishrag on the rack. “For thinking you might be interested in T-Dog.”

Carol meets her gaze at last.

“You shouldn’t feel that way,” she says. “I understand why you…suggested it.”

“If I’d known about you and Daryl—” Andrea raises an eyebrow.

“There was nothing to know,” Carol says quickly. “He’s—been my friend.”

“He slept in here last night, Carol. With you.” The other woman’s voice is mildly incredulous. “DarylDixon. Feral redneck.”

“Don’t call him that.” She thinks of his mouth on her fingers, the jerk of his hips against hers. How soft his voice is sometimes when he talks to her. Andrea tilts her head to one side, her expression apologetic.

“I’m sorry. I just meant…I didn’t even know if he liked women. And he’s so…after Ed, isn’t he…”

Carol furrows her brow. “Isn’t he what?”

Andrea shrugs, shifting her gaze to the counter beside her. She fiddles with a corner of the dishrag.

“Isn’t Daryl…” She purses her lips. “He’s always seemed a bit…wild to me. Like he might be dangerous.” She gives a slow exhale, and meets Carol’s eyes. “Violent.”

Carol stares at her.Don’t wanna take from you, her hand held to his heart. Her chest hurts, a steady burn, at the injustice of Andrea’s words.

“Did I ever tell you what Ed was like when we met?” she asks thoughtfully. Andrea shakes her head. “He was such a gentleman. Attentive, thoughtful.” She smiles at the doubt on the other woman’s face. “I know it’s hard to believe, and in retrospect there were signs of…who he really was.” She lowers her eyes. “He liked things a certain way. Liked me to behave a certain way.” She lays a hand on the edge of the sink and presses her nails against the stainless steel. “But mostly he was just—really nice. Until he wasn’t.” Her voice hardens. “Daryl isn’t Ed, Andrea. He’snothinglike Ed.”

The blonde touches the back of Carol’s hand in a conciliatory gesture, and Carol realises she is stiff with anger. She closes her eyes briefly, taking a deep breath as Andrea speaks.

“I’m sorry, I was out of line.” There is genuine distress on her face when Carol opens her eyes. “I had no idea—I don’t really know him. And Merle was so—”

“Daryl isn’t Merle.” Carol gives a frustrated smile, trying to soften her demeanour. “And he’s—he’s well aware of how you all see him.” Rage flickers in her again. “It doesn’t help that Shane treats him like he’s nothing.”

Andrea frowns. “That’s not fair.” But the pink in her cheeks suggests she knows Carol is right, and she sighs, sliding her gaze to the floor. “Anyway, I didn’t just come to bring your clothes, I wanted to say I’m…well, I wanted to find out what was going on with you and Daryl.” She laughs sheepishly, and Carol joins her, grateful to have moved past their disagreement, too tired to pursue it further.

“We aren’t—we only just, uh, talked about it.” Carol glances back towards the door of the RV. “I haven’t spoken to Sophia yet, it’s only been a few hours and we—it’s—”

“I get it,” Andrea says soothingly. “And I won’t say anything. But I thought, yesterday, when I saw how he was…” She narrows her eyes. “You two haven’t been together in secret for a while? Really?”

Shaking her head, Carol goes to the table and unzips the duffel bag.

“No. Not at all.” Her voice is brisk. “And it’s, it’s complicated, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t—tease him.”

“Complicated?”

Carol takes a cardigan out of the bag, weighing it in her hands for a second before putting it back. What is like, she wonders, being Andrea? Looking like that, enjoying sex enough to engage in it casually.

“Oh,” the blonde says quietly. “Of course. I forgot—after Ed, it must be hard.”

Carol doesn’t reply. The teeth of the bag’s zipper are cold against her wrists. Andrea has packed toiletries and clothes and even the book that was next to Carol’s bed.

“Thank you again for bringing these,” Carol says. “I’ll come down a bit later. Help out. I’m not very useful up here.”

“Nonsense.” Andrea moves towards the door, squeezing Carol’s arm as she passes behind her. “Don’t come down until you’re ready.”

xxxx

He gets back as the sun sets, cold to the bone and weary, a wild hog on his back. The beast is lean but has enough meat to have been worth the kill. Daryl headed deep into the forest from the meadow, away from the smoke he’d spotted. There were no other signs of human life as he hunted. Only a long-abandoned hut, brittle squirrel skins hanging from a fraying nylon cord outside, three empty beer bottles, cloaked with dust, in a corner of the single room.

Glenn lets him in, patting the bristly back of the hog in greeting. Daryl drops the animal and the hiker’s stick beside the entrance block and heads straight to the RV. He has been gone all day, despite promising to fetch clothes for Carol from downstairs, and his pace back to the bunker has been quickened by guilt. But his brain feels rinsed clear by the silence of the forest, despite his unease at the discovery that they have neighbours.

The RV is dark, and when he goes inside, it is empty. It smells of Carol, and a bag of clothes is open on the end of the bed, but neither she nor Sophia is there.

“She’s in the bunker.” Glenn has followed Daryl to the RV, and is peering inside. “Went down to make dinner.”

Daryl turns to him, scowling, dropping his pack on the table.

“The hell is she makin’ dinner for? No one else willin’ even after she thought she was gonna die down there?”

“She wasn’t going todie,” splutters Glenn with a nervous laugh.

“That ain’t what I said.” Daryl strides to the steps and Glenn stumbles backwards off the bottom one onto the ground. “Point is she thought she was.”

He pushes past the other man. The grass is emerald, the dark of evening rising from black dirt. Cold is gathering in the ground, pushing upwards, its pressure meeting the soles of Daryl’s boots. As he steps into the bunker building and starts down the stairs, he thinks of Carol’s terror over the radio, and the hours she spent locked up by Ed, losing herself to that fear. When he reaches the stairwell, he smacks the palm of his hand against the wall, absorbing the sting and letting it feed his rage.

The group is in the kitchen, all but Glenn, sitting around the table, the murmur of voices and laughter audible from the top of the spiral staircase. Daryl clatters down, his eyes finding Carol as soon as he reaches the bottom, unnoticed by the others. She is next to the stove with her back to him, her arms tucked neatly against her sides as she slices something on a chopping board. He can see immediately that something is wrong. Her movements are slow, her head bowed, each motion of the knife followed by a long moment of stillness. The pot on the stove is steaming gently.

Daryl weaves between Dale, Rick and Carl, ignoring their startled greetings. Silence follows in his wake, voices trailing off, Sophia saying his name. He glances at her where she is sitting at the table, a chess board set up in front of her, and he nods at her before turning his gaze back to Carol.

He stops beside her at the counter. She is staring down at the mushrooms on the chopping board, her chest rising and falling in small, quick breaths. She does not acknowledge him. Her fingers are white on the handle of the chopping knife, her arm so stiff that he can see the tendons in her wrist standing like wires under the skin.

“Hey,” he says very softly, touching his shoulder to hers. She flinches, and looks at him with dark, depthless eyes. A flicker of relief crosses her face. She leans towards him, her eyelids fluttering for a second.

“Is it open?” she asks. Her voice is level, expressionless. “The door, is it open?”

A bright bolt of fury blazes through him. If he looks at any of the others, at Rick or Dale or Shane, he will hit one of them.

“Yeah,” he tells her. “It’s open. Come up with me.”

She looks down at the mushrooms.

“I have to make dinner.”

Her manner is eerie, unfamiliar, and yet instantly recognisable to him as a voice belonging to another life, another time. He reaches across her body slowly and shapes his hand to hers around the knife. For a moment, he simply warms her icy fingers with his, and when her hand twitches he loosens her grip, the knife falling to the board.

“No, you don’t,” he says, keeping his voice quiet and calm, her hand in his, ignoring the other people in the kitchen. It is surprisingly easy to do this when his focus is Carol, when he is acutely conscious not of himself, but only of her. “Come up with me. Maggie, Andrea, they can finish here. Hell, I can come back and do it.”

She says nothing, lowering her gaze to the board before her. In his hand, her fingers are curled into a tight fist.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” he whispers, losing hope that she will come with him. But she nods. “Okay.”

He releases her hand and rests his palm on her shoulder, turning her to face the kitchen. The rest of the group is watching, but they avert their eyes as they see her face, except Sophia, whose chair squeaks on the tiles as she stands up.

“Me and Carl can finish the soup,” she says clearly, though her cheeks are red and her voice quavers. “Mama? We’ll finish the soup.”

Carol grasps Daryl’s wrist with her free hand, her fingers claw-like, and looks up at him as he steers her towards the steps. He slows his pace and turns his head towards the child.

“Thanks, Soph,” he says roughly.

“We’ll all help.” Andrea goes to Sophia and puts an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll bring some up when it’s ready.” She gives Daryl a small, encouraging smile, and he blinks, too startled to respond. Someone coughs, and he remembers, with bewildering suddenness, that he has news for them. He looks over at Rick.

“Saw signs of people to the north-east. Smoke. Fresh walker.” He holds up a hand as the deputy opens his mouth. “Show you where on the map later. Not now.”

“Oh come on.” Shane’s voice is filled with irritation. Daryl ignores him and guides Carol past them all, to the stairs, the burst of conversation in the wake of his news fading from earshot as they start to ascend.

The climb is slow. His leg is stiffening up after a day on his feet, and Carol’s breathing is so quick and irregular that they must pause frequently so she can try to control it. She does not let go of his hand, and he wishes he had an excuse to carry her again, to get her out of the bunker faster.

Two flights from ground level, she gives a nervous, breathy laugh.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he stops, his hand tugging hers as she starts up the steps. She looks at him over her shoulder, her eyes clearer now, her mouth flattened into a line.

“Stop sayin’ that,” he pleads. “Stop blamin’ yourself.” He climbs onto the step where she is standing, and she looks up at him. “Stay outta here for a bit and let them look after themselves.”

She studies his face, her eyes drifting to his mouth. Heat collects at the base of his throat, and he looks away from her. He is grimy from the woods, his nails dirty and his jeans streaked with mud, pig blood on his shirt.

“I need to pull my weight,” she says, and slips her hand free of his. Her expression is uncertain. He watches her pluck anxiously at the edge of her shirt. Scabs have formed on her fingertips and alongside her nails, and the sight of them makes his stomach clench. He left her alone here all day. But before he can speak, she turns her face towards the exit above them, and starts to climb again. He follows her, staying behind her now, his eyes lowered so he doesn’t stare at her ass.

Crickets are chirping near the fence as the pair exits the building, and the night air is damp, the moon wrapped in cloud. Carol stops on the grass, her arms folded against the chill, and turns her face skywards, inhaling deeply, greedily, her shoulders hitching as he reaches her. She wipes her eyes surreptitiously, and he wonders why it is so hard for him to touch her, to put an arm around her.

“I miss anythin’ today?” The question is all wrong, and not what he meant to say. She doesn’t take her eyes off the moon as she answers.

“Not really.” She shivers. “The people you saw—”

“Saw smoke, an’ one of the dead.” He shifts so that his arm is alongside hers, the cold cotton of her shirt drinking the heat from his. “Didn’t go check it out.”

She turns her face to him. Her eyes are coin silver, her lips parted. He swallows.

“I shoulda been here,” he says clumsily. “Today, I shoulda been here.”

Her mouth twitches into a tiny smile, a reflexive forgiveness which he has seen her practise time and time again, even when it is undeserved.

“You needed to get out,” she says. “And you brought back news.” Her eyes drop to the blood on his shirt. “And food?”

He grunts, frowning, his hand skimming over a stain on his side. Carol gazes at his face again.

“You’re not beholden to me, Daryl. You’re not chained up here now just because we—because we—”

“Know that.” He bites his lip. “But I didn’t need to be out all day. Shoulda come back sooner. Before you went down there.”

Her face shutters, and she looks at her feet, rubbing the toe of one boot in the dirt. He tries to hear what she has heard in his words, to understand what it is she is resisting in them.

“Not tryin’ to control you,” he blurts out. Ed stands in his periphery, a dark, hulking figure. Carol shakes her head quickly without looking up.

“It’s not that, it’s…I don’t want to rely on you the way I did on him.”

“Huh?”

Carol lifts her eyes. Her face is white and sharp, the moonlight finding every plane and angle.

“I depended on Ed for everything I did. Depended on him to tell me how to be.” A spasm of distaste crosses her face. “I don’t want to depend on anyone anymore. No more than I absolutely have to.”

“You think it doesn’t work both ways?” The words come before he can stop them. “You think I ain’t been dependin’ on you?”

She laughs, a soft, dry chuckle.

“Look at yourself. You don’t depend on anyone.”

He blinks, stung by how little she perceives him in this regard. The amusem*nt vanishes from her expression, replaced by disquiet, and he remembers how she dismissed what Ed did to her the night before his death, how she shrugged it off as unexceptional.

“I depend onyou,” he says hoarsely. She stares up at him.

“Anyone can cook and clean, Daryl.”

“Ain’t talkin’ ‘bout that.” The air about him has thinned, every breath an effort, his heart thudding. “You—you—” He runs a hand over his face in frustration. “You remember what Shane said to me ‘bout findin’ Sophia?”

Carol’s eyes flash. “Yes.”

“How she’d run if she saw me comin’? All methed up?” His voice is strangled.

“I remember.”

He glances towards the bunker entrance. “That’s who I am to them. When they look at me, that’s who they see.”

She shakes her head as he turns to her again, about to speak, but he continues before she can utter a word.

“But you don’t.” He tucks his hands into his armpits, crossing his arms over his chest, humiliated by articulating what she must surely know to be true. “Dunno why you don’t, but you’re the only one who—” He exhales loudly. “I depend on you to remind me who I am now. An’ who I ain’t.”

He reaches into his pocket for cigarettes, lowering his eyes, fumbling with the box and his lighter to distract from what he has just said. Carol is silent, very still as she watches him. He avoids her gaze, ducking his head as he lights up, squinting off to the side as he inhales. His fingers tremble.

“You were never who we assumed you were,” Carol says softly. “At first. Everyone knows that. Even Shane, even if he can’t admit it.”

Daryl shrugs, huffing out a lungful of smoke, angling his body away from hers defensively.

“Yeah I was,” he mutters. “Hillbilly asshole yellin’ at everyone.”

“Risking your life out there alone looking for a little girl.” Carol’s voice is stronger now, more insistent. She steps towards him and lays a palm over his heart, ignoring the way he jerks under her touch. “That’s who you were all along. You don’t need anyone to remind you when it’s just…who you are.”

Her hand is cold even through the cotton of his shirt. He flicks his eyes to hers and away again, tipping his chin and blowing smoke into the sky.

“Needyou.” His mouth barely moves, his jaw so tense that his temples throb. He is grateful for the deepening darkness, the sense that he could slip into the shadows if need be. Carol’s hand slides off his chest, hovering above his forearm for a second before she hugs herself once more.

“I need you too,” she whispers. “But I feel like I shouldn’t.”

He smiles, a crooked, painful smile.

“Ain’t that what bein’ human is?” he says, with an effort at lightness which mostly fails. “Ain’t we meant to need each other?” Her eyes well up. “That bastard you married, he needed you. Needed you to make himself feel like a big man. Like he mattered.” Daryl’s voice is icy now, the consonants spat out bitterly. “An’ he somehow made you think you didn’t deserve nothin’ an’ no one. Well, he was wrong.” He drops his cigarette, only half smoked, to the ground, crushing it with his heel. “You gotta let me look after you some. Please.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Even if I do a sh*tty job of it.”

She laughs damply, her chin trembling. He cannot find anything in himself but grief and longing.

“Please,” he whispers again, and she ducks her head and moves forward, his arms opening just in time for her to sag against him, her forehead hard on his shoulder. He slides his fingers into her hair, cupping her head, his other arm across her shoulders. She sighs, putting her arms around his waist, ignoring the dirt and stink of his day, and turns her cheek to his collarbone. His thumb grazes the curve of her ear, his wrist lying against her neck. He thinks of how it felt inside her, the softness and the stretch, the breathless cling of her. As she shifts on her feet, her abdomen rubs his, and his co*ck swells against his fly.

“sh*t,” he whispers. “Sorry.”

Her arms tighten around him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmurs. “Just don’t let me go.”

Chapter 29

Chapter Text

He goes back into the bunker reluctantly when Carol insists, leaving her reading by the light of a hurricane lamp in the RV. Halfway across the grass, he stops and looks back at her in the window, her head bent over the book, her fingers toying absently with a curl above her ear. It is an effort to turn away and enter the building. Daryl glances towards Glenn at the gate as he does so. The younger man is facing the road, his figure hard to make out through the gloom.

Daryl goes to his room first, locking the door and taking a shower, washing the hunt and the woods off his skin. He shoves spare clothes into a bag and leaves it in the business hub as he heads down to the kitchen. There, Rick already has a map spread out on the table. Maggie, Carl and Sophia are crowded at the stove, laughing as they chop and measure, and Daryl is relieved that Sophia is not more obviously distressed by her mother’s departure.

“Show me.” Rick looks up sharply at Daryl’s footsteps, and taps the map impatiently. “How close was the settlement?”

“Dunno if it was a settlement. Coulda been a camp. Temporary.” The hunter goes to the table and finds the approximate location of the bunker on the map, estimating his distance from it when he reached the meadow, and then the distance to the smoke. “Round here. Was about here when I saw it.”

“Looks like there’s a town.” Dale peers over his shoulder. “Could the smoke have been coming from there?”

Daryl shrugs, squinting down at the tiny print on the page.Thomasville. There are no significant locations marked near it, no hospitals or tourist attractions, no other towns. Just farmland, before the terrain gives way to river and swamp towards the coast.

“Walker I saw was dressed like he’d come from the office,” Daryl remarks. “Fresh though.”

Shane, pacing up and down the kitchen on the opposite side of the table, pauses.

“We gonna go see who’s there?”

There is a dangerous light in his eyes, a lust Daryl used to see in his father when two or three days had passed without him hitting anyone. A thirst for violence, for the heat of blood across his knuckles, the give of cartilage under his fist.

“We need to think on it,” Rick says uncertainly. “We don’t wanna rush into a fight we can’t win.”

“They might have supplies or information we can use,” Dale interjects. “More medical equipment. Maybe there’s a doctor there.”

They look at Lori, who is yawning in a seat at one end of the table, her hand on her belly. Andrea moves closer to Shane from the spot near the counter where she has been listening.

“Or maybe it’s a bunch of freaks an’ murderers,” the cop says, and laughs. “Either way, I guess it’s better we get the jump on them. Least in terms of what we know about their set-up.”

“I’ll go back tomorrow,” says Daryl. “Get closer and take a look.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shane says immediately. Daryl grunts, annoyed by the prospect of the cop’s company.

“We need to get a sense of how many they are. What kind of group.” Rick folds the map, glancing between the two volunteers. “But no contact with them tomorrow. Not on your own and not until we’ve discussed it again.”

Shane scowls, but shrugs in reply. The sheriff’s deputy exhales, looking as weary as his wife.

“Right then.”

“If they’re hostile,” says Hershel thoughtfully. “There’s no reason we can’t lock ourselves in here indefinitely.” He looks around at the others. “Isn’t that the whole point of this place?”

Daryl steps away from the table, folding his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits. The old man catches his eye and purses his lips in acknowledgement of a sudden recollection.

“Not sure about Carol, of course,” he says. “But maybe when she’s had a chance to…recover.”

Sophia turns from the pot of soup, which she and Carl are stirring with two wooden spoons, and gazes at Daryl, her face scrunched up with anxiety.

“I stay where she stays,” Daryl says bluntly. The room is very quiet. “If she can’t bunk down here, I’ll find somewhere else that’s safe.” He glances at Sophia, and dips his chin in a gesture of reassurance. Shane snigg*rs.

“You an’ her are actually—”

“Shane.” Andrea elbows the cop, and he doesn’t finish his remark, though he smirks at Daryl across the room. The hunter looks away, gritting his teeth. One day, he thinks, when Sophia isn’t watching him, he will wipe that look off Shane’s face for good.

“Soup’s ready.” Maggie switches off the stove, and Sophia comes over to Daryl, her brow furrowed and her shoulders hunched. He crouches down when she reaches him so he can hear her speak.

“I’m scared, Daryl,” she whispers. She smells of herbs and chicken stock, her face flushed from the steam.

“Ain’t no need to feel that way,” Daryl replies gruffly. “You’re safe here.”

“But Mama’s upstairs.” The girl stretches the bottom of her cardigan over her thighs.

“An’ I’ll be up there with her makin’ sure she’s okay. You sleep down here with Carl if you like.” He glances at Lori. “I won’t let anythin’ happen to your momma. Not tonight, not ever. Those folks I saw? They probably want the same as we do. To be left alone.” Doubt dries his throat. But Sophia nods, relieved, and he straightens up. He is restless with the need to get up top to Carol, made uneasy by the conversation despite his assurances to the child.

“Here.” Andrea thrusts a tray into his hands. On it are two bowls of soup and a plate of crackers, a bag of dried peaches. “Bon appetit.”

“Thanks.” He scowls at her, waiting for a comment about Carol, but none is forthcoming. The blonde gives him a half smile, her expression almost apologetic, and then she turns and leaves him with Sophia.

“Smells good,” he says to the girl. Some of the worry leaves her face, her mouth softening into a pleased smile.

“I like cooking,” she says, and blushes as though she has shared something deeply private with him. He grunts, frowning in confusion.

“Better go eat,” he tells her. “An’ I’ll take this to your momma.”

xxxx

Carol draws the curtains of the RV and washes while Daryl is in the bunker, wiping herself down quickly. She has not shaved between her legs since Ed died, and she wonders whether Daryl dislikes the hair there, whether he, too, would prefer her to be smooth. The thought makes her disproportionately anxious, and she scrubs harder than necessary at her breasts and armpits, her thighs and feet.

When he returns, carrying a tray, she is dressed in a loose black top and sweatpants, putting away the water and soap. He hesitates in the doorway, his eyes flitting from the damp towel hanging over the bathroom door to the V-neck of her top.Too low, she thinks, though it reveals no cleavage, and she lifts a hand to the neckline and plucks at it uncomfortably.

“Soup,” Daryl says loudly, and glares at her as his ears turn red. “Obviously.”

Her mouth pulls into a smile, affectionate laughter bubbling up inside her, and Daryl slides the tray onto the table and shakes his head.

“Promise I ain’t as dumb as I sound,” he mutters. It is a joke, but his face when he glances at her is shy. She bumps her shoulder gently against his before sitting down at the table. He slides into the seat opposite her, and reaches for the crackers, dropping a handful straight into the soup and starting to eat. For a moment, she simply watches him, enjoying how intently he focuses on the food, the tiny sounds of satisfaction he makes until he notices her gaze. His chewing slows, and he swallows.

“Good soup,” he mumbles.

She takes up her spoon and begins to eat. The food is tasty, thickened with noodles and beans, comforting and substantial.

“You told Rick where you saw the people?” she asks between mouthfuls. Daryl nods, head bent over his bowl.

“Gonna go look tomorrow,” he says. “With Shane.”

She doesn’t miss the way his voice changes as he says the cop’s name, and she isn’t sure, afterwards, whether her next words are motivated by that change or by her desire to be free of this place for a while.

“Can I come?”

“Nah.”

His refusal comes almost before she has finished speaking, and it is sharp and adamant. Something bright inside her recedes, fading back into the shadows.

“Never mind,” Carol says quietly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Daryl, staring at her with his spoon halfway to his mouth, lowers the implement slowly to the bowl. It clatters against the edge of the dish, drawing Carol’s attention. His knuckles are white around the handle, and she glances at his face again, startled. Frightened, for a second, her muscles doing the familiar calculation that will allow her to dodge a blow.

But Daryl looks troubled, not angry. He frowns, dropping his gaze to the soup in front of him.

“Ain’t for me to decide,” he says. There is reluctance in his voice, but also shame. “Jus’ want you safe.” He peers at her. “You really wanna come?”

“Yes,” she says eagerly. “I want to get out of here. I wouldn’t be any trouble, Daryl, I’d do whatever you and Shane said.”

His frown deepens.

“Shouldn’t do sh*t that asshole tells you,” he mutters, using a forefinger to poke the corner of a cracker under the liquid in his bowl. “If you wanna come, you can come.” He chews his lip for a moment, his next words softer, as though he is reassuring himself. “We ain’t gettin’ near them. Ain’t gonna mess with them.”

Carol puts her spoon down and leans forward, resting her fingertips on his wrist.

“It’ll be safe, Daryl. And I’ll have my knife.” She smiles as he hums uncertainly. “I’m not helpless anymore.”

“Never were,” he answers immediately. “Saved my life from those walkers, remember?”

A dusty street corner. Ed holding Sophia in the forecourt of the gas station. Daryl facing three dead teenagers. Her smile fades.

“I need to learn to survive,” she says. “Not only behind walls and fences. Out there.”

Daryl sighs, shifting on the seat, his feet scuffing the floor of the RV.

“I know,” he replies tiredly, toying with the metal rim of the table. “I know.”

She picks up her spoon again. Relief at the thought of getting outside this place spreads through her, loosening her muscles, lightening her movements.

“Hershel—uh, he suggested we might shut ourselves in.” Daryl is staring down at his food, hands in his lap now. “If there’s trouble.”

Her appetite vanishes at once. She makes herself eat another mouthful before replying.

“That’s a good idea,” she says without expression. “It’s why we came, isn’t it? For security?”

Daryl raises his eyes to hers. His gaze is bright blue, perceptive.

“Ain’t the only option,” he says. “‘Kay?” He picks up his spoon and breaks a soggy cracker in two. “You, me, Soph, we can find somewhere safe that ain’t underground.”

“I’ll be fine. I told you.” There is an edge to her voice, a note of resentment, and she wonders what is wrong with her that she is fighting so hard against this man’s attempts to protect her. “We’re better off with the group than alone.”

He doesn’t reply, but resumes eating, wiping soup off his scruff after every few mouthfuls.She’s f*ckin’ hard work. Ed used to say it even before they got married, as a joke at dinner parties, or to his work buddies when she out went with him for after-office drinks. The first time he hit her, she knew the reason without him having to speak. She understood that everything he asked of her body was recompense for the effort she cost him just by being his wife.

She eats half the soup and pushes her bowl over to Daryl, knowing his portion is not enough. Knowing she has been difficult this evening. He looks at her.

“Ain’t gotta do that,” he says softly. She sits frozen, unsure of what is right, and he rubs a hand across his face. “I know how he was, Carol.” The words are rough, awkward. “I see how you’re scared of me like you weren’t before we—before we spoke about…this.” He gestures between them.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and he clenches his jaw, one hand making a fist on the table beside his bowl.

“‘S what I’m sayin’,” he says forcefully. “Ain’t gotta be sorry for any of it. Ain’t gotta be sorry for thinkin’ I’m gonna hurt you.” His breath hiccups in his chest. “Don’t blame you. It’s him.” His voice drops. “I wish I’d hurt him worse before he died. I wish I’d made him regret every single thing he ever did to you an’ Soph.”

Carol shakes her head wordlessly, and reaches across the table, placing her hand over his fist. He looks at her fingers, and slowly, stiffly, turns his hand below hers and opens it.

xxxx

He wants to hold her the way she said she longed for when he started sharing her bed. He wants, with everything in him, to bring her whatever dumb comfort his proximity affords her, because he is certain nothing he has said to her has helped. But his body betrays him quickly as she tucks her back against his chest. Her ass grazing his crotch is enough to make him hard, his heart galloping against her shoulder, his skin prickling as his mind maps the curve of her waist and the plane of her abdomen, the swell of her breasts so close to his forearm. He pulls away after a few minutes, embarrassed and frustrated, and rolls onto his back. She tenses, lying motionless for a second before she reaches beneath the blanket covering them.

The mattress dips. Against his better judgement, he turns his head to see what she is doing, and finds her face flushed as she rolls onto her stomach.

“Come,” she whispers.

He sits up, the blanket falling across his lap and slipping to her waist, and she catches it with one hand and jerks it higher, covering herself. Her eyes are huge and dark as she takes his hand and guides it under the fleece covering to the back of her thigh. His fingers touch bare skin, and he gasps, sliding his hand further, following the crease of her ass to her inner thigh until she grabs his wrist, removing his hand to his lap.

“Come,” she says again, and he understands that he must neither look beneath the blanket nor touch her with his hands, but that she is giving herself to him the way she said she wanted to. He is rock hard, his hand burning from the skin of her leg, the soft place where her buttocks begin.

“Carol—” He swallows convulsively.

“Yes.” It is all she says, but as she speaks she strokes the bulge of his erection, and he is lost, pushing his pants down as her hand drifts away, kicking them off his ankles. The only sound in the room is the rasp of his breathing and the clink of his belt. When he moves on top of her, fumbling with the blanket to cover them both, a tremor passes through her, her fingers working on the comforter.

She spreads her legs so he can lie between them; it is why, he realises, she has taken her sweatpants off entirely. Her skin is by turns velvet soft and the cool satin of scar tissue, the tendons of her inner thighs taut against his flesh. She is wearing panties. His co*ck leaks precum onto the fabric as he settles where she has made space for him, his hips pushing her thighs wider apart, until he can feel the heat of her crotch against his balls. He is speechless.

Her hand reaches back and down, her fingers brushing his shaft. She pulls the crotch of her underwear to the side, exposing only what is necessary. With a shaking hand, propping himself on one elbow so he does not crush her, he angles his co*ck so the head is against her labia. She releases the hem of her panties once he is in position, the fabric scratching his slick, sensitive skin, and he moans, rubbing at her with his tip. She is dry, as far as he can tell, and he smears precum up and down until her labia part, her knees shifting even wider to help him. She does not say a word, her eyes closed, her cheek on the pillow as his slit nestles against hers. He wants to pull her panties further to the side, grasp her ass, push the blanket off and put his mouth on her, watch his co*ck stretch her. Part of him hates himself for being so aroused despite her stillness, despite the knowledge that this brings her no pleasure. But he has dreamt of her body for so long, and being above her, his hips pressing her ass, her naked skin against his, drives him to a kind of madness.

He nudges at her entrance, breathing heavily, one hand grasping the base of his co*ck tightly to keep himself under control. Her body resists him, her inner thighs flexing, and then she takes a deep breath, her fingers splayed on either side of her head, and relaxes enough for him to push inside her. She shivers as the head of his co*ck lodges within her, her walls rippling around it, and he hangs his head, breathing in a soft whine. She is lubricated only with his precum, but he jerks forward nonetheless, because deeper she is also hotter and tighter, and he wants to fill her, possess her, be as far inside her as he can manage.

He gets half his co*ck into her, working in small, sharp, erratic thrusts, fearful that he will come too soon. And then he can go no further. She is too dry, too tense, and even through the haze of his lust he can feel her trembling, a fine, flickering movement which she does not acknowledge. He sees the way her hands twist the covers as his co*ck opens her up. He whispers her name, sweat on his back and his brow, grief at his weakness turning the syllables into a lament. In reply, she raises her hips, tilting her ass to invite him further.

“Jesus. f*ck, Carol.f*ck.” He drops his face to her upper back. Her body is strangling his, her pulse enveloping his co*ck, and he is dimly aware that he has probably pushed her past the threshold of discomfort and into pain with his eagerness. “Stop. Tell me to stop.”

“You don’t have to be so—you don’t have to be so careful.” Her voice is low, strained, and her words turn his stomach. She moves her hips to try and take more of him, and he exhales into the fabric of her shirt, his biceps twitching as he holds his weight off her. Her body refuses him even as she strains to accept him. It hardly matters, he is so close to coming. He begins to withdraw, dragging at her walls, and her breath catches, her back arching as he stops with just the head of his co*ck inside her. His balls tighten, and he thrusts once, a chafing, clumsy movement which pulls a whimper from Carol, though he goes no deeper into her than he reached before.

His org*sm is long and bewildering, violent in a way he has never experienced with another woman or his own hand. His vision whites out, his co*ck thrusting shallowly as it pulses inside her, her muscles relaxing slowly as his stiffen. The wet sound of his cum punctuates each of his movements inside her. He makes a choking noise that is meant to be her name, and when, at last, he returns to himself, he slumps onto her, his face against the side of her neck. He thinks he might be crying like he did the first time he came inside her—his cheeks are wet, with sweat or tears, and he cannot speak. Beneath him, she is fine-boned and fragile, her skin feverish.

“Okay,” she whispers, and reaches back with one hand, stroking sweaty strands of hair off his forehead. “You’re okay.”

“You,” he manages. His co*ck is inside her, still hard, his balls wet where cum has leaked out of her and down his shaft.

“I’m fine. I’m fine, Daryl,” she murmurs, with such tenderness that his shoulders heave. With difficulty, he lifts his head and looks at her. Her eyes are closed, her curls tousled, her face slack with what he knows must, in part, be relief that it is over. His chest aches, and he bends down and brushes his lips over her temple. Her eyes fly open, her pupils black, her lips parting. Slowly, he does it again. She shudders under him, her walls tightening on his co*ck as it softens inside her. Carefully, he peppers kisses past her ear to the corner of her jaw, his lips barely grazing her skin. When he lifts his head, she has closed her eyes again. A tear slides from the corner of one, and with the tip of his tongue he catches it. Salt, heat.

He withdraws from her as smoothly as he can, though her body clings to him. Moving to her side, he reaches beneath the blanket to straighten her underwear. As he fumbles blindly, his fingertips touch the sticky warmth of his release, coarse hair, swollen flesh, and Carol makes a frightened sound, her thighs clamping shut on his hand.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, sh*t, your underwear, I—” He pulls his hand free of her legs, and she turns to face him, hauling the blanket to her chin, curling up tightly under the fleece. There are creases from the pillow on her cheek, and the shifting of the blanket releases the scent of his cum into the air between them. He reddens. Her face is lined with fear, her demeanour more distressed than at any point while he was inside her.

“No, it’s me,” she whispers. She has started to shiver, and he thinks with shame of the mess he has left between her thighs to soak her underwear.

“C’mere.” He moves towards her as he says it, tugging her against him, her knees digging into his belly and her shoulder-blades cutting into the flesh of his forearm as he embraces her. She nods, ducking her head so he cannot see her face, and he can feel the immense effort she is making to calm herself. A lump forms in his throat.

“I hurt you,” he says desolately. “Ain’t gonna—”

“No.” She shakes her head rapidly. “No, it’s—Ed, he—” She grasps one of Daryl’s biceps, and lifts her face to look at him. He makes himself hold her gaze, and gradually, as she studies him, she looks less panicked. With her other hand, she touches his cheek, her thumb swiping across his cheekbone.

“It’s me,” he says stupidly, because she is looking at him like she wants to make sure of his identity. She bites her lip.

“Ed, when he was finished, after he’d—he would keep on.” She doesn’t take her eyes off Daryl’s face. “With his hands or whatever he had…available.” Her voice cracks. He remembers sitting outside the Peletiers’ tent with Sophia, the endless period that passed before Ed emerged. “It was worse sometimes, that part. That’s why I got a fright, I thought you—”

She stops, her expression dissolving into misery, her features a blur. He isn’t sure whether he is tearing up or she is trembling, or both.

“I know you won’t hurt me,” she whispers. “I do. But I’m still scared, like you said.”

“I know.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead, his mouth unsteady. He speaks against her skin. “Is that why you let me…?”

“No.” A fist pushes against his chest, her voice quavering. “Itoldyou—”

“Okay. ‘S okay.”I love you, he thinks.I love you even though I don’t know how. She exhales, limp in his arms suddenly. This time, he can hold her as she needs to be held, wrap her in heat and muscle and a love that feels like a terrible secret, like something he will break before he ever learns how to wield it.

Chapter 30

Chapter Text

Shane does not want her here, because she is weak, a liability even on a mission that should involve minimal danger. He and Daryl came out of the bunker this morning red-faced, in silence, and Carol, waiting on the steps of the RV, knew they had argued. Andrea was on their heels, ignoring both men and walking to the campervan.

“I think it’ll be good for you,” she said without preamble. “And I told Shane not to be an asshole.”

Carol glanced towards the gate, where the cop was talking quietly to Dale, the morning watchman. Shane’s head turned, his gaze meeting hers, and he smiled: a nasty smirk, the sort Ed used to give her around the campfire in the quarry when he was anticipating bedtime.

But two hours later, following Daryl through the forest, Shane has managed not to infuriate the hunter or insult Carol. Admittedly, it is because they have been travelling in near silence, but Carol is grateful nonetheless to Andrea. She walks between the two men, Shane at her heels and Daryl leading them both, and her eyes move between Daryl’s back and the forest around her. The seasons have changed in the weeks since she was last among the trees. Fall has coloured the world in shades of brown, and stripped the trees of their leaves, opening the canopy to the sky. The earth is loamy and dark, worms writhing over drifts of fallen leaves, bedraggled birds hopping among stained tree roots.

The journey is further than Carol has walked for a while, and she grows tired towards noon. Shane’s step has been uneven for the last hour, and he curses from time to time—perhaps he has a cramp, or a blister. She does not ask. Ahead of them, Daryl moves steadily, his pace unchanging, his manner alert. For long periods, Carol forgets their surroundings, thinking of last night, of Daryl’s body atop hers. The featherlight kisses he gave her, the heat of him coming inside her. She felt an unexpected sense of ownership as he spasmed within her, his hips jerking against her ass.Mine. She wished she could take him fully, hold him deep inside her as he shook and moaned. Ed used to come as though he was disgusted with her, as though he was punishing her. Daryl comes like he cannot believe he is touching her at all, like she could crush him with barely a glance.

The hunter stops abruptly at the edge of a meadow, the sudden sunlight, though watery, setting the edges of his hair alight. Carol halts at his side, and Shane walks a few feet past them.

“Saw the smoke from here,” Daryl says. “But we gotta crest the hill before we’ll be able to see the settlement.”

He extracts a crumpled box of cigarettes from his pocket, tapping one out and holding it between his lips as he finds his lighter. Shane wanders between bushes of mustard greens, drinking from his canteen. Daryl offers Carol the lit cigarette without looking at her. His eyes, unblinking, are on the cop, and his lips are dry and chapped. She thinks of his breath against her temple and shakes her head. He shrugs, taking a drag.

“You okay?” he asks without expression.

“Yeah.” She stretches her arms above her head. “I’ll be stiff tomorrow, probably, but the walk is good for me.”

He chews at the end of the cigarette, ducking his head and adjusting the strap of his crossbow.

“Ain’t talkin’ ‘bout the walk,” he mutters.

She frowns. His eyes flick to hers, soft and anxious, and she blushes.

“I’m fine, Daryl. Just like I was last night.” She aches inside, the same ache she feels in her legs today: the protest of muscles unused for a long time. He doesn’t reply. His next drag is quick, a sigh of smoke drifting towards the dirt before curling upwards.

“See what you mean,” Shane calls, and the hunter’s head jerks up. The cop kicks at something in the undergrowth. “Looks like a damn accountant.”

Carol walks curiously over to him. The scent of his cologne is mixed with sweat, the tanned skin of his neck gleaming. He swats irritably at a fly that has risen from the corpse in the bushes, buzzing near his face. The body has a bolt wound in its forehead, a pair of cracked spectacles hanging around its neck. Carol pities the dead man, whose face even now is mild, a little startled, and whose shirt was ironed by someone—perhaps the wearer himself—before he wore it to his death.

Twigs crack behind her, the smell of tobacco cutting through Shane’s body odour. The cop glances at Daryl.

“You search him yesterday?”

“Nah.”

Shane pats the man down, pulling a ballpoint pen out of his pants pockets, a handkerchief stained with ink. Snorting in disgust, he tosses his findings onto the body. Daryl turns away and walks back towards the trees, stopping at the edge of the meadow with his back to the others and unzipping his jeans to take a piss. Carol lowers her eyes, thinking of the velvet skin of his shaft, the weight of it resting against her ass. Another woman might know how to enjoy his girth, his length, properly. She angles her body away from the trees and looks up to see Shane watching her, close enough that she can see beads of sweat among the wiry chest hairs in the V of his shirt.

“Never struck me as the type who might want a man in your bed,” he says thoughtfully. “Not after that bastard you married.” His eyes drop to her throat, her chest, appraisingly. She stiffens. The sound of Daryl’s zipper reaches her.

“I don’t wantaman,” she says in a low voice. “I want Daryl.”

She does not acknowledge the lie in it, the absence of her physical desire, and she hopes the cop cannot sense it. Shane laughs, his eyebrows raised.

“Well,” he says, smirking. “I hope he’s gettin’ the job done.”

“What job?”

Carol flinches, and Daryl touches her hand briefly with his.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up.” His fingers are warm and callused on her wrist. For a moment, she is under the blanket with him again, his hand between her legs as though he wants to toy with her, torture her, the way Ed used to. Shane’s gaze is a quick dark shadow across her skin.

“Come on,” she says, moving out of Daryl’s reach. Her voice sounds strange in her ears, calm and efficient, the voice she used to use, when she was hurt worst, for Sophia. “We won’t have to go much further to be able to see them, surely?”

“If they’re still there.” Shane spits into the grass and heads off towards the far end of the meadow. Behind her, Carol senses Daryl hesitating, as though he is about to speak. Before he can, she walks after the cop, her eyes on the ground and the fading yellow flowers in her path.

xxxx

He is torn between monitoring the terrain, the direction of their progress, and keeping an eye on Shane. For Carol’s sake, he has swallowed his fury at the cop, whose response when Daryl announced that she would be joining them was a peal of laughter.You’re sh*ttin’ me. If Andrea hadn’t intervened, Daryl might have broken the other man’s nose right there in the kitchen.

But however different their reasons, the truth is neither Shane nor Daryl wants Carol on this excursion, and the shameful knowledge of that has helped keep the hunter’s temper in check. He would rather know she was behind the fence of the bunker compound than walking ahead of him into the stand of trees beyond the meadow. He would rather mull over last night without the distraction of her easy stride, the glint of her hair, the round of her ass as she bends to tighten the laces of her boots. Shane looks back at Daryl over her crouching form, a knowing look in his eyes, and Daryl turns away, his mouth tacky, his co*ck stirring. He blinks, imagines her on her hands and knees before him, naked, her ass in the air. A soft moan escapes him. Her footsteps begin again, and he turns to follow.

After she fell asleep last night, heavy and trusting in his arms, he got up and went outside, stood in the darkness beside the RV, hidden from the watchman, and jerked off, one palm flat on the cold, damp metal of the camper, his head hanging. His co*ck was sore from how tight she’d been, and yet swollen with the need to have her once more. He won’t f*ck her again. Hewon’t. Not until he finds a way to give her pleasure too. He has never made a woman come—he is fairly certain of this despite a waitress who made loud and dramatic noises throughout their drunken coupling—and he does not hope to succeed with Carol. But he wants more for her than painful acquiescence to his needs. Wants to touch her without her body seizing in fear and the anticipation of hurt.

Shane reaches the crest of the hill first, a ridge where the trees thin out before a grassy slope descends into a shallow valley. The cop sticks close to a pair of Fraser firs, the bristling evergreens providing the concealment of a ragged-edged shadow. The woody, citrus scent of the trees reminds Daryl of Christmas, the job he had for a few years as a teenager cutting down small firs for people’s holiday decorations. Carol pinches a couple of pine needles off the nearest branch and brings them to her nose, smiling as she sniffs them.

The landscape below the ridge is patchworked with fences and fields, but among the scattered farm buildings there are no houses, only barns and warehouses.

“Industrial farmland,” Daryl says. “Looks like peanuts.” The fields are dull brown this time of year, and unkempt, although traces of plant rows remain. And beyond the border of the last farm, perhaps a mile and a half from where they stand, is a town: Thomasville.

Shane has taken out his binoculars already, and Daryl digs for the pair in his pack, handing them to Carol first. With his naked eye, he can see enough to know that the town is well protected, and that it is inhabited. Shipping containers, bearing a brand name he can’t make it out, have been hauled to the outskirts of the settlement, cutting off access at any of the open points in its circumference. There are tiny figures at both ends of the Main Street, on top of the containers and below, keeping watch.

“Children,” Carol breathes, and passes him the binoculars. The plastic is warm from her hands. Daryl lifts the device to his face.

Mcnu*tty’s. The font on the shipping containers is an old-fashioned cursive, brown on a green background, and the same logo seems to be on the signpost for the town, under its name. Daryl counts four guards at each of the main entry points, all armed with guns as far as he can make out; each of the other access points is manned by two people. The town is the kind of place that survived, before the turn, only by virtue of its proximity to industrial agriculture. Centred on a cobbled square, in the middle of which is a statue of some kind, the place has one gas station, a handful of commercial buildings, and three small, relatively new-looking apartment blocks at one end of the Main Street. The other housing is older, less well maintained, clustered at the opposite end of the town. A faded American flag hangs from a pole in the town square.

Daryl notices all of this before he sees what Carol did: that the square is currently full of clusters of children, from toddlers up to middle-schoolers, sitting in groups and doing an activity. The sight is disorienting. Daryl hasn’t seen so many kids in one place since the world ended, and he is immediately anxious, scanning their surroundings for adult supervision. There is plenty: men and women in ordinary clothes walk between the groups, stopping to talk and laugh, to comfort a crying child.

“Ain’t what I expected.” Shane lowers his binoculars, and Daryl does the same. “Where the hell all the kids from?”

“Maybe there were lots of families in the town when the virus started,” Carol suggests doubtfully. “Or maybe they’re just—maybe they take in orphans.”

Daryl chews his lower lip, taking another look at the town.

“‘S a clinic,” he says. In a corner of the square is a building marked with a large red cross, its original purpose unclear from this distance. Shane grunts, and sinks to the ground, slinging his pack off.

“Might as well settle in an’ keep an eye on them for a couple hours,” he says. “Carol, you got food?”

xxxx

They approach home close to nightfall, and once Carol starts to recognise the woods near the bunker, she moves faster, anxious to get back to Sophia. They spent a few hours on the hillside, watching the inhabitants of Thomasville come and go, trying to get a sense of their numbers. They saw nothing untoward. Only those groups of children, apparently happy and healthy.

Carol has no hope of being as stealthy as Daryl in these environs. His feet seem never to make a sound unless he intends it, and he blends instinctively with the shadows. She is too tired even to try this late in the day, and the crunch of leaves and twigs beneath her feet, the scrape of gravel, is a comfort in the eerie forest twilight, during which the world is flickering and insubstantial. She gets far enough ahead of the two men that Daryl says her name in a low, cautioning voice. Peering through the gloom, she calls back.I’m here.

The walker has an advantage it shouldn’t ever have in this world: she does not expect it. She hasn’t seen a live walker since they arrived at the bunker, and even though she knows the dead are everywhere, she and her companions have not seen any all day, except that corpse in the meadow, and a dead hiker who was more part of the landscape than he was human. This walker is tall and broad-shouldered, what’s left of its pot belly squashed against Carol’s side as it lurches at her, its hands tearing at her shirt as it struggles for purchase on the fabric. She falls, her back hitting a stone, bruising her as it knocks the air from her lungs. She cannot scream; she has no breath.

The walker, a man, is filthy, its skin and clothes the same uniform, muddy brown, the skin around its mouth spotted with black, fungal marks. It smells of rotting leaves, stagnant water, and it lands on her with its full weight, her elbow raised at the last minute to keep its face from hers. Her forearm lodged beneath its chin, she pushes at the damp flesh of its throat. Its eyes were once blue. Now they are opalescent, the blue of milk rather than the blue of the sky. There is a gold filling in one of the man’s molars.

Carol’s first instinct is to go limp, the weight of the corpse on top of her so much like Ed’s weight, accepting it the only way to avoid serious injury. But it is not Ed, and it will not rape her; it is going to kill her. It claws at her abdomen and her shirt rips, cold grit and the slime of dead flesh rubbing her skin as they struggle with each other. It is that which prompts her to reach for her knife, the repulsive intimacy of the walker’s body on hers, the reminder of her dead husband. Her rage and disgust awaken the sequence of movements that have become muscle memory these past weeks, her hand grabbing for the knife at her waist, her fingers barely through the brass knuckles when she stabs the creature atop her.

Her first swing is wild, the blade piercing the walker’s cheek, blackened blood oozing from the cut as she yanks her hand back. Daryl’s voice comes to her, but she cannot hear what he is saying, and she slashes again, the tip of the blade entering the walker’s temple. It snarls at her, snapping its jaws, and she howls as she sinks the knife into its brain, turning her face to the side as the corpse slumps onto her. Blood spatters her cheek.

The body has barely come to rest when it moves again. Daryl is repeating her name,Carol Carol Carol, his voice frantic as he drags the corpse off her. As soon as she is free, Carol rolls onto her side, her knife still in her grasp, her other hand clutching a handful of dead foliage as she gasps for breath. Daryl kneels beside her, bending his face to hers, his hand on the bare skin of her side. She whimpers, fumbling at her shirt, which is half gone, ribboned and torn, exposing her to the cold and the two men with her. She looks up, past Daryl, at Shane. His face is pale with shock, but his eyes, gleaming, are on her breasts.

“Turn around.” Daryl speaks without taking his eyes off hers, as though he can see in her expression what Shane is doing. “Turn thef*ckaround.”

“Calm down. Jesus.” Shane obeys the command lazily, turning halfway around. Carol closes her eyes.

“You scratched?” Daryl’s voice is softer now, thick with some feeling she can’t identify.

“Don’t—know,” she replies. There is silence for a moment. The ground beneath her is growing warm. She is so tired, her fingers cramping in the handle of her knife, and her back throbs where it hit the stone.

“Can I check?” His voice is so strained that she opens her eyes, her brow creased with concern. He is looking at her face and she knows his eyes have not once dropped below her neck while she has been lying here.

“Yeah,” she whispers. He nods, a quick jerk of his chin, and pulls a flashlight from his pocket. She squeezes her eyes shut in the sudden bright beam, and he pushes the remains of her shirt back, revealing her further. She is wearing one of the pale blue bras he brought for her from the mall in Savannah, and her cheeks burn at thought of him seeing it on her, the scarred flesh of her breasts next to the satin, the ugly cigarette burns on the tender skin of her armpits just above the elastic.

“Gonna cover you,” he murmurs, his voice echoing her mortification. “Gonna cover you soon as I’ve checked.”

His fingers brush over her stomach, his other hand nudging at her ribs to urge her onto her back. She rolls the way he wants, wincing as she moves, keeping her eyes closed as his fingertips move lightly over bones and muscles and marks. He says nothing about them, though his thumb slides gently over an old cut in her side, slanted to fit between two ribs. Ed’s letter opener, blunt enough that he had to work hard to get it through her skin.

Her chest, the spill of her breasts from her bra, is as grimy as the rest of her. But Daryl doesn’t touch her there. Instead, he leans over and blows softly on the dirt, cleaning it off her with a steady, warm exhale. Her nipples harden, poking at the cups of her bra, her eyes stinging.Sorry. Sorry.The apology hangs between them, and she isn’t sure which of them spoke it, or whether they both did. Her body is reacting, gooseflesh spreading, her nipples tingling because of shock, or cold, or the strange, soft caress of Daryl’s breath. He pauses, and she feels the pad of his thumb swipe along the edge of one bra cup, over the swell of her breast, the heat of his hand hovering just above her nipple as he wipes away some stubborn filth. She wants to arch her back and push against his palm, but she doesn’t know why; only that her muscles tense in readiness.

“You’re okay.” He exhales the words as though he has been holding his breath for minutes. She is covered, suddenly, rough fabric hiding her chest, Daryl’s hands placed carefully on her sides as he helps her into a seated position. Dazed, she wipes her knife on the leg of her pants. A threadbare black sweater, redolent of tobacco and Daryl, is tucked across her front, and she catches it with her free hand to hold it up.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Knew it was a mistake bringin’ you,” Shane mutters, and Daryl is on his feet instantly, shoving the cop’s shoulder. Shane turns around, his eyes sliding over Carol to the hunter’s face. “What? She coulda got herself bit. Left her kid an orphan.”

Carol draws a breath edged with sound, her throat closing at the thought of Sophia learning she was dead.

“Shut up.” Daryl is right in Shane’s face, grasping a fistful of the cop’s shirt which he is twisting as he speaks. “Shut your goddamn mouth for once.”

Carol scrambles to her feet, tripping backwards a step as she regains her balance. The dead walker lies in a heap a couple of feet away. She pulls the sweater over her head, not bothering to remove her torn shirt.

“Leave him, Daryl.” Her voice is too soft, her throat hurting. Shane has seized Daryl by the shoulders, trying to pull himself free of the hunter’s hold.

“All you do is talk sh*t about people.” Daryl shoves the other man until his back hits the trunk of a tree. “Like you ain’t ever had to learn anythin’ in your life, you smug asshole.”

“I know my responsibilities,” retorts Shane, struggling as Daryl uses his other arm to pin the cop to the trunk. In the months since the quarry, Carol realises, the hunter has grown stronger than Shane. “I ain’t puttin’ people at risk by steppin’ outta line.”

Daryl laughs, a wild, raucous sound, and slams Shane against the tree again. He drops a hand to his waist, his fingers dancing along the handle of his knife, and Carol moves to his side.

“I’m sorry, Shane. Both of you.” She puts a hand on Daryl’s wrist, the men stilling and turning their faces to her as she speaks. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’tf*ckin’apologise to him.” Daryl releases the cop and steps back, snarling. He spits on the ground, his eyes bright with anger when he looks at Carol. “You got jumped an’ you killed that f*cker by yourself. He should be thankin’ you, not whinin’ like a little pissbaby.”

Carol puts her knife back in the sheath and picks up Daryl’s pack. He snatches it from her before she can put it on her own shoulders, her body swaying forward as he yanks the strap from her hand. Shane gives a derisive snort and turns towards home, striding off ahead of them both. Daryl jerks his head, avoiding Carol’s gaze, and she follows the cop, her step slow, her back aching.

xxxx

Sophia is waiting at the gate when they reach the bunker, her face peering anxiously through the fence from beneath the hood of a pink sweatshirt. Carol runs across the road to greet her, crouching at the wires and curling her fingers around her daughter’s, saying something Daryl can’t make out. Carol is moving oddly, gingerly; she was hurt when the walker knocked her down, somewhere he can’t see, though she has not said anything about it. Daryl is too ashamed to ask.Don’t f*ckin’ apologise to him.

To his surprise, she does not head for the RV, but, holding Sophia’s hand, descends with the girl into the bunker. Shane stops to talk to T-Dog, who is on watch, and Daryl follows the woman and child inside. He watches Carol as they get deeper underground: the tightening of her shoulders beneath his black sweater, the grip of her fingers on Sophia’s, the way her breath keeps quickening and she has to force it to slow. He wants to tell her she doesn’t need to come downstairs. But it is not his place to tell her anything.

The bunker door stands open, as it has since Carol was trapped inside. Dale has returned it to a manual setting, and at night the watchman shuts it when he comes and goes. But during the day, it stays open. Carol passes through it without slowing. Sophia is chattering about something—a chess game with Hershel, Carl asking Lori again if he can have a knife. At the start of the hallway to the bedrooms, Carol hesitates, and looks down at her daughter. A few feet behind them, Daryl stops too.

“I need to get cleaned up,” Carol says to Sophia. Her voice is light and warm. Her posture is stiff.

“What’d you see?” Rick has come up from the kitchen.

“Town,” Daryl says shortly. “Just let us get washed up. Ran into a walker on the way back.”

Rick’s gaze shifts to Carol, blood smearing her cheek, and a flicker of frustration crosses his face. Daryl glares at him.

“I can fill you in.” Shane has entered the bunker, his voice a drawl. He passes Daryl and Carol without acknowledging either of them. “I need coffee though. C’mon.”

The cops descend together to the kitchen. Daryl glances at Carol. Sophia is watching him, her mother’s hand in both of hers, her eyes round.

"A walker?"

He nods. "Your momma took him down." There is pride in his voice, and Sophia studies him, her fingers moving over Carol's knuckles.

"You're okay." The child's eyes move to her mother's face, and Carol nods. “Were there bad people at the town?”

Daryl frowns, moving closer. “No way to tell. Ain’t no reason to worry ‘bout it now, Soph.”

“There were lots of children.” Carol slides the hood off her daughter’s hair, touching her cheek for a moment. “And they looked well.”

Some of the anxiety fades from the girl’s face, and she squeezes Carol’s hand before letting it go.

“I’m gonna tell Carl you killed a walker,” she says. “Can I tell him?”

Carol nods again, and the child heads for the stairs to the kitchen. By the time her clattering footsteps have faded, the woman has vanished down the hallway towards her room.

Daryl goes to his bedroom, locking the door and getting in the shower, standing for a long time, eyes closed under the stream of water, before he starts to wash himself. Pulling on clean clothes, he returns to the hallway and stands outside Carol’s door uncertainly, thinking of the force with which the enormous walker took her down, the awkwardness in her movements after she fell. There was a moment when she was completely hidden by the dead man, his bulk covering her, her name caught in Daryl’s throat and chest and belly.

He will not think of what he saw of her, the taut, scarred skin of her abdomen, the soft fold of her bellybutton, the white of her breasts against blue satin and lace. Her nipples pushing the fabric, so close to his hand, his mouth— He covers his face, scrubbing at his eyes, his breath hissing between clenched teeth as he refuses to think of it. Cigarette burns where her skin is softest, closest to the bone. Gooseflesh rippling across her breasts as he wiped away a streak of dirt.Jesus f*ckin’ Christ.

He knocks on her door. There is no answer for several seconds, and when she opens it, her hair is wet, water trickling down her temples, a towel in one of her hands. She is wearing a loose-fitting, fraying-edged grey T-shirt that looks like it might once have been Ed’s.

“Hey,” she says. Her gaze is steady, unreadable.

“Hey.” He scuffs the floor with the toe of one foot, scowling down at the ground between them. “Came to—to—”

He trails off, and she stands aside so he can enter. The door clicks shut behind him. The room smells of citrus, the acid sweetness of grapefruit. On the dresser, a small first aid kit is open.

“You’re hurt.” It sounds like an accusation. He turns to face her, scanning her bare arms, her neck, the folds of the T-shirt. Her breasts are loose beneath the fabric.

“I’m fine,” she replies calmly. “Just a bruise on my back.”

“So what’s that for?” He gestures at the med kit with a sharp motion of his hand. She frowns slightly, tilting her head to one side.

“Ointment to soothe it, Daryl.”

“You need Hershel?” he asks, taking a step closer to her. His voice is getting louder for some reason, while her own demeanour is unchanged.

“No.”

They stare at each other.

“You sure it ain’t a scratch? A—bite?” He takes a step closer to her.

“He didn’t get behind me.” She smoothes the T-shirt over her stomach, and the cotton pulls across her breasts for a second. Daryl swallows.

“Yousure?”

She looks away from him, her composure shaken now.

“Carol.”

Her face, when she meets his eyes, reminds him of a trapped animal, a creature cornered and threatened, and he is almost sorry.

“You want to check?” she asks forcefully. “You want to see?Fine.” She blinks. Her eyes are liquid, and when she turns around, he can still feel the grief in them, as though she imprinted it into his flesh. She lifts the bottom of the shirt and pulls it over her head, baring her back, holding the tangle of fabric tightly to her chest.

“f*ck,” he breathes.

“I know what it looks like.” Her voice is cold suddenly, and shaking.

“You’re—” The words stick to his tongue, the roof of his mouth. Carol laughs, a short, bitter sound, and he goes to stand behind her. In the middle of her back, in the dip of her spine, is a bruise, already turning black at the centre, which lies over her vertebrae. But the skin is unbroken; she was right about that. It is the other marks on her flesh that he now notices, which were unseen by him for a moment in the shock of her beauty: the fine ridges of her scapulae, the slender breadth of her shoulders, the gentle curve of her waist. The knowledge that her breasts are bare under the shirt she holds against them. The way each inhale draws the skin tight across her ribs.

The scars are familiar to him. He has not seen them so fully, but he has not forgotten the river, or how her back felt under his hands the night he found her in a blanket and nothing more. He knows how different weapons leave different wounds. He knows that cuts in some places cannot be stitched because they are impossible to reach on one’s own body, with bloodied, trembling hands. Towards the middle of her back are deeper scars, the flesh ridged and furrowed where it has not been held closed. There are more burns, thinner, smaller cuts, marks whose provenance he does not want to imagine.

Slowly, reverently, he places the heels of his hands on either side of the base of her spine, just above the waistband of her pants, and splays his fingers so the tips touch her hips. She shudders, bowing her head, her shoulders curving forwards. The desire flooding him is tender, different to the urgent want he mostly feels, the desperate hunger that drew him into her body last night. He bends his face towards her skin, breathing on it the way he did on the forest floor, inhaling the scent of her as his fingertips press lightly against her hipbones. If he touches her in the wrong way, she will shatter. He closes his eyes as his brow rests on her shoulder, bone to bone.

Tentatively, his mouth brushes a spot beside one shoulder-blade, the very tip of his tongue daring to taste her skin. She moans, her muscles hard beneath his hands.

“Don’t hurt me.” The words are filled with terror, her voice high and uneven.

“Carol,” he whispers. He kisses the curve of her neck, damp with water from her hair, and licks across her skin to a belt mark, sucking softly at the damaged flesh. His face and the palms of his hands are burning hot, the world around him dissolving into a haze. Silken, ragged flesh, a ripple of tension against the flat of his tongue. She sways, his hands anchoring her.

“You don’t—”

“You’re so goddamn beautiful.” His voice is dark, his mouth against her throat now.

“Don’t mock me.” The confusion in her tone hurts almost more than seeing what Ed did to her. Daryl shifts forward so his erection brushes her ass.

“I look at you an’ I can’t think of anythin’ else.” He closes his eyes, moving his hips away from hers again. “You don’t want me to touch you where he hurt you, I won’t, Carol. I won’t. But Christ, I want to so badly.”

“You won’t if you see—”

Daryl releases her, panting, struggling to get his own shirt over his head.

“Look at me.” He waits for her to peer at him over her shoulder. Her eyes are black, the irises ringed with silver. Slowly, his erection withering, he turns around, displaying himself to her.

“Got my own scars,” he says roughly. “Remember? Jus’ like the ones on you.”

She turns away, her shoulders lifting, and he steps forward and wraps his arms around her middle, his bare chest against her back. She stifles a groan as his body touches hers. Her skin is cool, impossibly soft. He rests his forehead on the crown of her head and feels a tremor pass through her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry for bein’ an asshole.”

She turns in his arms, a clumsy movement that pulls at the fabric of the T-shirt clasped to her chest, and she puts an arm around him, her face in the curve of his neck. He is back in the house where Ed died, in the early hours of the morning, a blanket between her body and his. Except this time his skin is bare, too, and her hand is stroking his back, her fingertips running across the marks there as gooseflesh rises on her beneath his forearms.

“You’re gonna get cold,” he says softly.

“No, I’m not.”

His thumb brushes a burn on her back, and she shivers. He wants to put his mouth on the puckered skin, trace the exact dimensions of her pain with his tongue. Make her feel something other than shame.

“Let me put the ointment on?” His voice is hoarse. She doesn’t answer at once, her breath a sigh against his neck, and then she nods.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Thank you.”

Chapter 31

Chapter Text

He turns away from her to find the ointment and when he turns back, she is lying on the bed, on her stomach, her arms drawn against her sides. She is better concealed from him, not relying on the crumpled T-shirt to hide her breasts and belly. But the sight of her like this, as she was last night, is an instant trigger for Daryl’s desire. Her pants sit low on her hips—the garment is too big for her, just like the shirt—and her lower back, when he sits on the edge of the bed beside her, is pale and downy. He holds the tube of ointment and stares at her. She looks at the opposite side of the room, her face blank as he grazes his fingers over the round of her shoulder.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he whispers. The bruise in the middle of her spine is dark and swollen, the old scars on her skin distorted where they intersect with the injury. She makes a short sound of acknowledgement in her throat, and he unscrews the tube, squeezing the cream onto his fingertips. It smells of herbs and chemicals. Carol sighs and closes her eyes, and he wonders how often, in her former life, she used ointment like this on her bruises.

She tenses as he touches the cream to the centre of the mark, and he mumbles an apology for the cold. The ripple of gooseflesh that spreads towards her waist distracts him as it disappears below her pants, and he thinks of her erect nipples beneath the satin of her bra in the forest. Clearing his throat, he makes a light circle with his fingertips, spreading the cream outwards in spirals to the edges of the bruise. She neither complains nor moves after the initial stiffening of her muscles, but lies silently, her mouth a straight line.

It is easy to get lost in the task, to forget himself in the texture of her skin. His fingers drift beyond the edges of the bruise, up towards her shoulder-blades, where the muscles are knotted. He changes the pressure in his hands, and kneads with small, rolling movements until the tension in her lessens. Muffling another sigh, she turns her face into the pillow, the heels of his hands rubbing just below her neck. He does not comment. His stupor absorbs her sound, works it into the freckled skin of her upper back, smooths it over the corrugation of her ribs. He skims his palms down her waist, spanning it for a second with his hands, choking back a moan. In the centre of her lower back, creeping from beneath the waistband of her pants, is a burn mark, made not with a cigarette, but with an open flame, he thinks, the skin smeared roughly like the top of a pot of boiled milk. He touches the pad of his thumb to the mark, his fingertip against the elastic of her pants. Even as he lifts his thumb away, she is flinching.

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She shifts on the bed so she can tuck one arm under herself. The gesture is protective, but the white swell of the side of her breast is suddenly visible to Daryl, and he looks away, at the wall, his hands in his lap. He should stop touching her and leave, but he does not want to confirm her fears that if he sees her properly, he will not want her. Tentatively, he circles greased fingertips on the bruise, and when she does not react, he widens the movement. His co*ck is uncomfortably hard, his eyes averted from the side of her breast.

He knows the moment she falls asleep, because all the tension remaining in her dissolves, her lips pouting, her arm shifting into a more comfortable position, her legs separating a little, one coming to rest against his hip. He keeps stroking her back, afraid of waking her if he stops, his eyes returning again and again to the burn at her waistband. Her ass is round and inviting even beneath the baggy pants, the lush give of it against his thrusts last night so vivid that he finds himself panting as he remembers it.

Getting up carefully, he covers her with a blanket and goes into the bathroom. In the mirror, his face is flushed and guilty. He barely has to stroke himself twice to come. There is condensation on the shower door, the scent of her shampoo in the air. When he is done, he washes his hands and leaves, wretched and tired, to find Sophia. He needs to reassure her that her mother is okay. More than that, he needs to find a way to tell her how things have changed. He owes it to the girl, regardless of what Carol might say to her daughter herself.

Dinner is a haphazard affair involving day-old bread made by Maggie and assorted sandwich fillings, and everyone is eating wherever they find themselves. It is Daryl’s favourite kind of meal. Dinners at the big kitchen table expose all the tension in the group, fine wires pulled taut across the dishes and glasses, the thrum of unspoken hostility rousing Daryl’s anxiety.

Lori and Rick are at the table in the business hub, talking in low voices. The deputy nods at Daryl as he passes them.

“Shane says there’s a clinic?” Rick says. Lori’s face is eager.

“Yeah.” Daryl pauses beside the table. “Couldn’ tell much about it, but it was there.”

Rick nods, shifting his attention back to his wife, and Daryl goes downstairs. He puts together a sardine and wild onion sandwich, listening to Maggie and Glenn wistfully discuss pizza toppings as he squirts barbecue sauce over the fish, and then he takes his plate and heads for the games room. Sophia and Carl spend most of their time there.

Sure enough, he bumps into the boy as he reaches the doorway. Carl is carrying an empty plate and scrunches his nose in disgust as he eyes Daryl’s dinner.

“Thatstinks,” he says.

“‘S whatmeneat,” Daryl retorts. “‘Stead of peanut butter an’ jelly.”

Carl looks down at his own sticky plate, and back at the sardine sandwich, frowning. Over his head, Daryl spots Sophia on one of the couches.

“Is that…barbecue sauce?” Carl sounds like he dreads the answer but cannot help asking. Daryl snorts, shaking his head in irritation, and moves past the boy into the games room.

The pool table is scattered with colourful balls, two cues lying on the green felt. Beyond it, on one end of an overstuffed, navy-blue couch, Sophia is eating a sandwich, her bare feet pulled onto the cushions. She smiles at Daryl, and then immediately looks worried.

“She’s sleepin’,” he says, pre-empting her question. “She’s fine. Got a bruise from bein’ knocked over is all.”

The girl nods slowly and picks a piece of bread off the sandwich in her hand, with a delicate pinch of her fingers. Daryl drops onto the couch next to her, leaving a generous gap between them. She looks over at his plate.

“Know it smells bad,” he mutters, poking at the meal. It has lost some of its appeal.

“It reminds me of that house where you found me. The basem*nt.”

He glances up in surprise, remembering the oil stains on her rainbow shirt, the salt and grease of the fish slipping down his throat. Sophia has a tiny smile on her face.

“I haven’t eaten sardines since then,” she tells him, and looks at the peanut butter sandwich in her hand.

“You want a bite?” He picks up half of his own sandwich, realising how thick the bread slices are compared to hers, and holds it out. She shakes her head.

“No thank you.”

The polite refusal is warmed by her expression. He grunts, and sinks his teeth into the bread, humming with satisfaction as the sauce and salt hit his tongue. He chews with his eyes closed for a moment, sees the grimy windows of the basem*nt, hears the hum of mosquitoes.

“Sometimes I dream about that place.” Sophia’s voice draws him back to the games room. She has put her sandwich down again, half-eaten.

“Bad dreams?” he asks, swallowing a lump of food. The thought of her waking in a panic, like Carol does, turns his stomach. But Sophia shakes her head.

“No, just…dreams. Sometimes you’re there and then we go home. I mean, back to the farm.” She sighs and nestles deeper into the couch.

“You miss the farm?” Daryl asks through a mouthful of sandwich, for want of something else to say. A troubled expression crosses her face, and she rubs the arm of the couch with her fingertips.

“No.” She meets his eyes. He dips his chin in understanding, and lowers his sandwich to the plate.

“Me neither.” He stuffs a stray bit of sardine back between the bread, fiddling with it unnecessarily. He misses none of the places they stayed before Ed died. Each of them is filed in his memory according to the bruises Carol had, the fights he overheard.

“Carl says you and my mom are—he says—” The girl stops. Her voice is quiet, just above a whisper. Daryl shoves a crust into his mouth, his eyes watering at the size of the mouthful, and stares straight ahead. “He says you’re Mama’s boyfriend.”

f*ckin’ Lori.

“Dunno about that.” He sounds defensive, his irritation at the gossip mingling with guilt that he didn’t speak to Sophia sooner. That Carol didn’t. He peers sideways at the girl, who looks puzzled, and he sighs. “I mean, I ain’t been no one’s boyfriend before.”

There is silence. He gazes down at the remains of his sandwich.

“So you are?” the child asks. He tries to hear what she is feeling—anger, disappointment, resentment. But all he can identify is uncertainty.

“We spoke,” he says heavily. “Couple nights back. Me an’ your momma.” He remembers Carol caught between his body and the cupboard in the RV, her hand guiding him between her legs.I know what you need. He rubs his face wearily. “Been meanin’ to tell you. I’m sure she has to.”

“But—” The same quiet voice, the word proffered slowly and carefully. “You’ve never…had a girlfriend?”

He turns crimson, a deep flush that spreads from his chest to his hairline. Sophia is at an age when, he remembers dimly from middle school, girls start thinking about these things.

“Nah,” he says gruffly. “Dunno sh*t about it.”

He glances at the child. She is watching him, biting her lower lip pensively.

“Maybe—” He stops, hears Merle cackle derisively in his head, and stares down at his lap. “Uh, maybe…” He hesitates. “You know anythin’ about it? That stuff?”

Silence, and then Sophia giggles. Daryl looks up to find her face creased with amusem*nt, and for the first time since sitting down, he relaxes.

“You don’t know about boyfriends and girlfriends?” The girl is pink cheeked, her eyes bright.

“Know what theyare,” he says. “Dunno the—the rules.” Peering at her, he scratches the back of his neck self-consciously, and her face straightens into an earnest expression.

“You have to bring your girlfriend flowers,” she says. “And hold her hand and—” Her mouth twists oddly. “And look after her.” The humour is gone from her voice. Daryl takes a slow breath.

“Ain’t many flowers this time of year,” he says, holding her gaze. “But I guess I can manage the rest.”

xxxx

She does not stir when Sophia climbs into bed with her, or when Daryl settles himself in the armchair under a thin blanket. She wakes for the first time at dawn, to the sound of their breathing, the weight of Sophia’s hand on the bare skin of her belly. The comforter only just conceals Carol’s breasts, and she tugs it up drowsily. She never sleeps without covering herself. It would have been a foolish choice beside Ed.

Her muscles are stiff from yesterday’s struggle with the walker, her back tender against the sheet. Daryl has angled the armchair away from the bed, his hair sticking up in tufts above its upholstered back, one hand hanging loosely near the floor. He is trying to protect both her and her modesty, keep her safe from nightmares and from the discomfort of being seen, and she stares at the fingers of that limp hand, curled in sleep, for a long time. He was so hard against her yesterday as he held her, his scars to hers, his co*ck hot against her ass. Ed used to be aroused by evidence of her injuries, but it is not the same with Daryl; rather, it is as if he does not see them, or sees past them to someone he still desires. How much damage can he tolerate, she wonders miserably. How much can he see before having to look away?

She turns her face towards Sophia, whose cheek rests against her shoulder, tiny, wheezing snores emitting from her open mouth. Carol lays her hand over the smaller one on her belly. She should get up and put a shirt on, but she doesn’t want to disturb her daughter, and she wants to savour, a little longer, the memory of Daryl’s hands applying ointment to her skin. He mapped her back with his fingertips, stroked them across smooth skin and ruined skin alike, touched the parts of her she can barely stand to touch herself, like the burn that creeps up her lower back. She closes her eyes against a rush of tears, her fingers trembling over Sophia’s, the memory of pain so vivid, so acute, that she is afraid, for one dizzying second, that she will lose control of her bladder.

The armchair creaks. She doesn’t move, her eyes squeezed shut, her lashes wet. Daryl yawns, grunts softly, his knees clicking as he stands up. She listens to him stretch, breathes his scent as it drifts to her from his movements. His footsteps towards the bed are deliberately quiet, and she keeps her eyes closed, her face turned towards Sophia, when he stops. For a moment, nothing moves. And then his fingertips graze her collarbone as he takes hold of the edge of the comforter and pulls it even higher, covering her to her chin. As he lifts his hands away, he touches her cheek, light as air, and sighs. At the sound of the door clicking shut behind him, she lets out a shaky breath, swallowing the tears that have collected in her throat.

The door closing, her gradual slide into a full awareness of being underground, makes her chest tighten. She eases away from Sophia and out from under the comforter, snatching her shirt from the bottom of the bed and pulling it over her head. Her child sleeps on.

Despite the steady temperature of the bunker, Carol remembers to grab a thick cardigan after she has pulled on her boots, resisting the urge to head for ground level barefoot and underdressed. By the time she is halfway up the stairs, she has taken the warmer garment off, her climb so quick that she is sweating. But the cold at the top is like a pane of glass against her skin, icy and unyielding, the light crisp and white even as the sun is rising. The grass, heavy with dew, is flattened in places by footprints—Daryl’s. He is smoking just past the solar panels, facing the woods behind the property, but as she watches him from the doorway, he turns, giving her a slight nod, his face puffy with sleep. She puts the cardigan back on and matches her feet to his prints.

She accepts the cigarette when she reaches him. The toes of her boots are speckled with water stains from the grass, which the group has not bothered to cut since arriving here. The tobacco tastes better than coffee, more bitter, and as she holds the smoke in her mouth, she thinksthis is what he must taste like right nowand coughs. Ed always tasted sour and alcoholic, like rich food and red wine. The burn of indigestion.

“How come you don’t drink much?” she asks. Daryl stares at her, taken aback, and she watches a spider scuttle up a fence pole.

“Drink when I wanna get drunk,” he says at last. “An’ that ain’t often these days.” He digs the toe of one boot into the grass, crushing the blades, and she hands the cigarette back to him. He looks down at it between his fingers. “Never seen you drink except that wine at the CDC.”

“I don’t like alcohol,” she says flatly. “The taste, the smell. I only drank it when Ed told me to.”Loosen up, bitch.

Daryl is silent. The cigarette glows orange, ash building along its length. As she watches, he turns the stick and lifts his other hand, bringing the end of the cigarette within a breath of the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. She inhales sharply. The moment passes, the cigarette in his mouth, his other hand in his pocket, so quick she might have imagined it. And yet she saw his skin turn gold in the light of the flame, felt him tense in anticipation of the burn.

“Sophia, she knows.” His voice is roughened by smoke. Carol takes the cigarette from him without being offered, flicking the ash from its end. “Carl told her I was your boyfriend.”

Carol is too startled to suppress her laugh. The man beside her reddens.

“Thought she might be mad,” he mutters. “But she ain’t.”

“I knew she’d be okay with it,” Carol says. Her throat hurts, from the cigarette or something else. “The hard part was—was that night in my room.” She shifts closer to him, brushing his arm with hers as she takes another drag. “She knows you better now.”

“Said I’m supposed to bring you flowers.” Daryl turns to look at her, scowling, and she is so choked with sorrow that she cannot even laugh. She drops her gaze to the grass, the dew turning silver in the sun.

“I wish I’d met you first,” she whispers, knowing he won’t be able to make sense of the comment in this moment, this conversation, and not caring. The feeling is so strong that her ribs ache with it.

“Wouldn’t have Soph then,” he says gently, sadly. His breath tickles the crown of her head, and she nods, pressing her lips together. His arm twitches like he might put it around her, but he doesn’t.

“How’s your back?” he asks abruptly, straightening so that a tiny space opens between them. She passes him the cigarette.

“Fine,” she replies. “The ointment helped. Thank you.”

He grunts. The air between them is charged with sudden tension. She thinks of the marks on her back, the half-hidden burns and the puckered edges of badly healed wounds, and she knows he is thinking of them too.It felt nice, she wants to tell him. Wants him to know she’s never been touched with such kindness, not since she was a child. But she doesn’t want him to feel like he has to do it again.

“Meant what I said.”

She stiffens, alarmed as though he has eavesdropped on her thoughts. He drops the cigarette and puts it out with his heel.

“I get it. Not wantin’ that. But it’s only you who doesn’t.” He swallows audibly. “Me, I’d be pawin’ you constantly if I had the choice.”

She laughs again, a quick, forced chuckle, and he turns his face towards the far-off fence, away from her. His hair is mussed, getting long in the back, ends brushing the neck of his sweater. She wants to gather it where the strands are clinging to the wool, run her thumb along the ragged ends. He turns back to her, his gaze sharp, blue, and she opens her mouth out of some obligation to speak.

“Rick, the others…what did they say about Thomasville?”

Daryl shrugs. “Not much. Guess we’ll talk about it today.” He pauses. “Lori was pleased about the clinic.”

Carol nods. The wire of the fence lights up for a second, as though with a blaze of electricity, the sunrise turning it into something spectacular between one blink and the next.

“I can sleep in the bunker now,” she says firmly, pushing aside the thought of her panic when she got up. “It’s safer down there for both of us.”

“You sure?” Daryl asks slowly. The sun moves, and the fence returns to dull grey, specks of rust on the metal where it rises from the dirt.

“Yes.”

“I, uh, I gotta start takin’ watch shifts again.” He has done only one day shift since she got trapped in the bunker, and taken no nights. She nods quickly, guiltily.

“Of course.”

“Feel better when I’m keepin’ an eye on things myself,” he confesses, ducking his head. She reaches across the space between them. His hands are in his pockets, and she slides her fingers to the inside of his wrist and follows the soft skin down, into the warmth between his palm and the fabric, making room for her hand to squeeze into his. He looks down as she does, his fingers limp and pliant, his face unreadable.

“You’re so warm,” she breathes, and he leans over and kisses the side of her head, his hand tightening around hers.

xxxx

“Surely if they’ve got as many kids as you say, they can’t be bad people? They can’t be looking for a fight?” Lori’s voice is loud and insistent. Opposite her at the kitchen table, Shane leans forward, his palms flat on the wood, his hands splayed.

“Where’s the logic in that, Lori?” he asks. “Where thehellis the logic? Can you explain it to me? For all we know, they’re training those kids to be soldiers.”

“Did theylooklike soldiers?” the deputy’s wife replies shrilly. The two of them are addressing each other as though no one else is there, and somehow the group has accepted, for now, that they are to be silent. Even Andrea. Even Rick. “Didn’t you say there weretoddlers? Carol said they were playing games.” Lori turns to Daryl. “Daryl. What evidence did you see of guns?”

“Sentries were armed with guns,” he says shortly. “The people lookin’ after the kids had knives, far as I could see.”

Lori turns to Shane. “Well?”

The cop sits back, laughing derisively, his gaze shifting to Rick. At Daryl’s side, Carol stiffens.

“Guess I’ll let you explain things to your wife, Rick,” says Shane. “Don’t know why I’ve been wastin’ energy arguin’ with a woman fulla hormones anyway.”

Andrea, Lori and Rick all speak at once, chiding and angry, and Shane laughs again.

“Forgive me if I don’t want my baby delivered by avet.” Lori shrieks, and then her voice drops, quavering. “No offence, Hershel.”

Hershel narrows his eyes, his lips pursed as though he might speak.

“A clinic doesn’t mean there’s a doctor.” Carol’s voice is quieter than all the others, but the room falls silent. “It just means there’s someone. Maybe a vet. Maybe a teacher who used to do first aid for a school. Maybe someone with no qualifications at all.”

Lori frowns. “You’d rather we stayed here? And I gave birth here?”

“I’m not saying that,” Carol tells her. “I’m pointing out that we don’t know for sure they’re any better off than we are.”

“There are more of them than us, though,” Dale says contemplatively. “Lots more, by the sounds of it.”

“How would we even approach them?” Andrea asks. “March down there waving white flags?”

“Send a representative.” There is a note of condescension in Shane’s voice.

“It’s not gonna be me,” pipes up Glenn.

“It’s not gonna be any of us.” Rick speaks, finally, intoning the words as though from on high. “We’ve got no reason to leave here and no reason to trust a bunch of strangers.”

“Thankyou.” Shane smacks a hand onto the tabletop triumphantly. “Still a dream team, buddy, you and me.”

“Oh shut up.” Lori stands up, swaying. Her belly is small and round and eye level with Shane. His face flushes, and he looks suddenly vulnerable, as Daryl has never seen him before. Lori, by contrast, looks furious. “You can’t be serious, Shane. Not after—”

“Hey now.” Rick’s chair scrapes across the kitchen tiles, and he takes Lori by the arm. The movement is gentle, as much to help her keep her balance as to get her attention, but Daryl senses Carol flinch in response.

“Shane.” Andrea’s voice is ice. Lori is in Rick’s arms, mumbling something high-pitched, inaudible. “I think this meeting is done.”

The cop seems to come back to himself, and gets up, giving Andrea a hard look before addressing Rick.

“We gonna vote? Or is it clear enough that the only fool wantin’ to invite trouble into our lives is your wife?”

Rick’s face goes white, his fingers clenching in Lori’s hair for a second.

“Cool off,” he hisses at Shane. “An’ watch your mouth.”

“What if they come here?” Dale’s voice, matter-of-fact, cuts through the sound of Shane drawing a deep breath. “Shouldn’t we think about moving on before they do?”

“To where?” Maggie asks. “Just drive off an’ hope we find somewhere safe? No.” She shakes her head vigorously. “The reason we came here was to stay. We can lockdown an’ survive here as long as we have food.”

Dale shrugs. “It’s something to think about.”

“A better thing to think about is identifying the weaknesses of this bunker and taking measures to address them,” Hershel says. “Winter’s nearly here. Better to hibernate than be on the road.”

“All right.” Dale holds up his hands. “Playing devil’s advocate, that’s all.”

Daryl shifts restlessly against the counter. They met down here, with no one on watch, for an agreed-upon half hour, which is up. He doesn’t like the thought of no one on the gate, but Rick insisted that everyone be able to contribute to the decision.

“Gonna do my shift if we’re done here,” the hunter says. The others look at him as though they’d forgotten he was there.

“Sure, yes. Go ahead.” Rick is still holding Lori. “Pretty sure we’re done for now.”

Daryl crosses the kitchen, boots squeaking on the floor mopped by Carol after lunch. She has climbed the stairs four or five times today, leaving tasks abruptly, emerging into the cold to breathe and stare up at the sky. But she has brushed off his concern.Fine.I’m fine. Felt like some air. He pauses at the foot of the spiral staircase and glances back at her, past Shane and Andrea, over the top of Hershel’s head. She is waiting for him, her smile ready, her face soft despite the lines of strain on it, and as he ascends the stairs he is smiling too, his step light, his mind full of Carol.

Chapter 32

Chapter Text

The school calendar—thus called because Carl insisted upon it to ensure weekends were respected—hangs in the kitchen, on a corkboard above the spice rack. Its accuracy in terms of specifics is uncertain, and nobody sees much reason to try and improve it. What matters is that for two days out out of every seven—the days labelledSaturdayandSundayregardless of what they actually might be—Carl and Sophia do not have to do a tedious hour of Math or find European capital cities on a world atlas.

Hershel gets sick on a Tuesday, and quarantine is enforced late on Thursday afternoon. For half a day, the old man appears to have nothing worse than a scratchy throat, a runny nose. But he vomits during dinner that night, splattering the kitchen table with thin, yellow bile, and by midnight he is delirious with fever. Maggie sits beside his bed, trying to get him to drink, sponging his chest down with tepid water. They have no antibiotics left, and the useful medication from Merle’s stash is long gone.

It is Andrea who suggests quarantine, more than a day after they probably should have thought of it. Hershel himself would likely have declared it if he was coherent. But there has been a week of tension in the bunker since the argument about Thomasville, Lori not speaking to Shane, the cop fighting late at night with Andrea, their raised voices upsetting Carol more than she will let on to Daryl. And the old man’s illness unites the group as it seems nothing has for a long time, in a unanimity of focus: sickbed quiet and concern, the making of broth and tea, the reapportioning of chores now that Maggie, Glenn, Hershel and, as the old man gets sicker, Carol are otherwise occupied. This harmony keeps anyone from thinking that separation might be necessary, or at least makes them reluctant to suggest it. Carol does nursing shifts when Maggie gets tired, though the younger woman refuses to leave her father’s room and sprawls on the second bed, sleeping fitfully, sayingDaddy?in loud panic each time she wakes.

When the subject of quarantine at last arises after lunch on Thursday, Carol is summoned by a sombre Andrea, without explanation, to the kitchen, leaving Maggie and Glenn with Hershel. Daryl is pacing the kitchen when the women reach the bottom of the stairs, his boots scuffing the tiles, his turn at each counter quick and sharp. Lori sits at the head of the table, Rick and Carl on either side of her, and the rest of the group is clustered at the opposite end, empty chairs between the Grimeses and everyone else. Shane leans against the refrigerator, arms folded, posture relaxed. But when Carol passes him, heading for an empty chair, she can sense the frustration in him, the air alive with it. The back of her neck prickles.

“Carol, over here,” Andrea says hastily, and gestures at the foot of the stairs, the furthest point in the kitchen from Lori.

“Ohhellno.” Daryl strides past the table to Carol, who is standing halfway down its length, and she looks up at him in confusion.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “Did something happen? Is someone else sick?”

She looks past him for Sophia, her heart in her throat. The girl is sitting next to Dale, her eyes wide and anxious.

“No one else is sick,” Andrea says soothingly. “We’re just discussing how to keep it that way.”

“We need to quarantine everyone who’s had prolonged contact with Hershel.” Rick clears his throat, opens his mouth to continue, and closes it again. Carol, hugging herself in the cool of the kitchen after the stuffy warmth of the sick room, gazes at him as she absorbs his words.

“That’s only…Maggie, Glenn and me,” she says.

“An’ it ain’t happenin’,” says Daryl fiercely. “Ain’t no way you’re gettin’ locked up with a sick man.”

“It’s not prison,” says Shane mildly. “It’s quarantine. It’s an acceptable medical practice.” His voice, infinitely reasonable, could not contrast more starkly with Daryl’s. “Lori’s pregnant. Carl and Sophia are susceptible as well.” His dark eyes settle on Carol’s face. “It’s for the good of us all.”

“I can’t—” Carol swallows thickly, the fingers of one hand circling the wrist of the other. “I can’t be locked up down here.”

“An’ you won’t be.” Daryl moves slightly in front of her. There is a note of warning in his voice, and his fingers flex at his sides as he stands between her and Shane.

“What about the RV?” Dale pipes up. His eyes are on Daryl, and there is sympathy in his expression.

“Yes,” Andrea says eagerly. “Carol, Hershel, Maggie and Glenn can move into the RV.”

“An’ me.” Daryl turns to the blonde. “If Carol’s in there, so am I.”

“Horny bastard. You—”

Shane’s sneering remark is cut off as Daryl lunges for him, his fist hitting the cop’s jaw. Shane’s head snaps back. Daryl holds the other man up by the shirt and draws his fist back, but Rick is on his feet, his chair screeching on the tiles, and he seizes the hunter’s elbow, wrenching his arm behind his back.

“Stop it!Stop it!” Carol crosses to the struggling men, ignoring Andrea’sCarol, don’t.Shane is gripping Daryl’s face with one hand, his fingers like pincers, his other fist swinging for the hunter’s belly. Partially restrained by Rick, Daryl tries to twist free, roaring something too loud and furious for Carol to make out. His yell cuts off as she reaches him, as Shane punches him in the gut and he drops, winded, his shoulder, in Rick’s grip, yanked upwards as he lands on his knees.

Carol grabs Rick’s wrist.

“Please let him go,” she says. Her voice is soft and pleading, the voice Ed liked best. “Please.”

Rick looks at her strangely, his hands sliding off Daryl’s arm. Shane is cursing, touching his jaw gingerly, and Carol crouches beside Daryl, brushing his hair back so she can see his face. He wipes his forearm across his mouth, his chest heaving, and when she puts a hand on his arm he pulls away, getting slowly to his feet. There is silence in the room as he stands. Even Shane stops muttering, his face wary, his body braced as though he expects Daryl to continue the fight.

“You lock her up,” the hunter says to Shane, his breath wheezing in his lungs. “You lock me up with her.” Turning slowly, he looks at the others. “Got it?”

“Fine,” snaps Shane. “For Christ’s sake. You can take some extra watch shifts to make yourself useful.”

“Where will I sleep?”

Carol turns to her daughter, who is sitting hunched at the table, her eyes on Daryl, her voice uneven. The child’s face is white and terrified, her hands folded tightly in her lap the way she used to fold them to show Ed she was a good girl.

“Soph.” The hunter’s voice is hoarse. Without turning around, Carol knows he has read the fear in the child’s posture, and that he is stricken by having been the cause. “Soph, I—”

“I’m sure you can sleep with Carl and Lori and Rick,” Carol says, going to her daughter. She crouches, taking Sophia’s hands in both of hers and gently working her fingers free of each other as she speaks. “And you can wave at me through the RV window.” She smiles, ignoring the sheen in the child’s eyes.

“I want to stay with you,” the girl whispers. Carol squeezes her hands.

“I know, baby.” Her smile wobbles. “But it’s just for a short while. Just until Hershel’s better and we can be sure no one else is sick.”

Lori gives an encouraging hum, her first contribution to the conversation.

“You can stay with us, Sophia,” she says brightly. “Maybe we can cancel school for a few days and declare it a holiday for you and Carl.”

“Yeah!” The eagerness in the boy’s voice makes the corner of Sophia’s mouth turn up in a hint of a smile. Her eyes slide back to Carol’s.

“Just until Mr Greene is better?”

Carol nods. “Just until then.”

But Mr Greene does not get better. That afternoon, on a makeshift stretcher, Daryl and Glenn carry him up to the RV, where Maggie and Carol are waiting to get him settled in bed. The campervan is small, too small, and the old man’s coughing fills the space, the bedsheets wet with sweat after an hour. In here, at least, Carol can warm broth on the tiny stove, make coffee for Glenn and Maggie without going down to the kitchen. As far as quarantine goes, this is not bad; it is not, as Shane said, a prison. They have fresh air, and they can go outside the RV as long as they don’t have direct contact with anyone else who might be aboveground.

Once Hershel has been transported upstairs, Daryl sits on the steps of the van, sharpening crossbow bolts. He has avoided Carol since his outburst in the kitchen, and he did not try to speak to Sophia before the group separated into its new halves. His movements, as he works on the arrows, are clean and efficient, but he sits bent over, closed off from the people in the RV.

He takes the night watch that is supposed to be Glenn’s, and also the shift after it, which is his, wandering the perimeter of the property, crossbow on his back. Close to midnight, Maggie falls asleep next to her father, who has not stirred for hours, and Glenn makes a bed on the floor, offering to help Carol wash up before turning in. She refuses, and he is snoring moments later.

The RV smells of illness and damp. They have been using steam to open Hershel’s chest. It has made little difference, and his fever is unchanged. Carol is ragged with exhaustion, her hair curling tightly against her face and neck from the moisture in the air, her back aching from bending over the sickbed. But she cannot sleep without speaking to Daryl.

It is drizzling outside, a steady trickle from thick cloud cover that feels oppressive, as though a storm is coming. She finds Daryl in the doorway of the entrance building, two cigarette butts at his feet, another cigarette in his mouth as he stares out at the rain. She ducks inside, resisting the urge to touch him, and after a moment he turns from the doorway to face her.

“Does she think I’m gonna hit you?”

It is not at all the question she expects, and she hesitates before answering.

“No.”

He laughs, a small, bitter sound, and drops his gaze to the gritty cement floor, taking the cigarette from his mouth.

“Right.”

“She doesn’t. She got a fright when you hit Shane, that’s all.” Her voice gets lower. “So did I.”

He nods, biting his lip, a pained smile on his face—of resignation, of regret. She takes a step towards him and stops.

“You didn’t need to—to fight him like that. The others. Not for me.”

His expression shifts into one of incredulity. “You think I woulda stood by while they locked you up? Knowin’ how you…”

She shakes her head. “No. ButIwouldn’t have let them lock me up. I told them as much.”

He stares at her for a moment before nodding again, sharply. “Fine.”

Turning back to the doorway, he takes a quick drag and exhales into the night.

It might be because she is so tired, or because they have both been anxious about Hershel. It might be because she knows that it is inevitable that he will scare Sophia again, and that it will hurt him just as much the next time despite the source of her fear being another man altogether. Whatever the cause, Carol wants Daryl in a way that is unfamiliar to her, with an intensity she has not felt before. The longing both is and is not physical. She wants toholdhim, to be as close to him as she can be, to accept him into her body because he thinks he is unacceptable—to her and to her child.

She cannot begin to articulate this.

“Daryl,” she whispers. His shoulders stiffen. “Come here.”

He stands motionless, silhouetted in the doorway, and says nothing. Slowly, she undoes the button of her jeans, eases down the fly, and when he hears the zipper, he shakes his head without turning.

“Nah,” he rasps. The cigarette drops from his hand, hissing out on the damp cement. “Ain’t doin’ that again.”

She hesitates, her hands on the waistband of her underwear.

“Please,” she says quietly, and he gives a muffled, sobbing laugh.

“Ain’t f*ckin’ you when you don’t want it. Like I’m a goddamn dog.”

“But I want—”

He turns, lifting his head, and there is such hope in his face, coupled with such misery, that the words stick in her throat. She pushes her jeans and underwear lower on her hips, watching his pupils flare.

“I want to be close to you.” Her voice is husky. His eyes are on the strip of flesh below her sweater and above her pants. She shimmies them down further, to where the hair begins on her mound. Daryl lifts his hands and pushes the heels against his eyes, his teeth clenched, and she moves back until she is against the wall beside the stairs. The concrete smells musty, and it is cold against her ass when she pushes her jeans down to her thighs.

Daryl is in front of her in three strides, his palms flat on the wall on either side of her head, his face inches from hers. She can sense his arousal without having to look down, see it in the tension in his body, the black gleam of his eyes.

“There’re other ways to be close to me,” he says, the words clumsy and slow, his breathing laboured. “Could kiss me. Let me f*ckin’touchyou.”

His right hand drops, and for a second she thinks he will reach between her legs. She tilts her chin in fright, her breath catching, and he laughs humourlessly as he undoes his zipper.

“Ain’t him, Carol.” His mouth twists. “Ain’t gonna take more than you’re offerin’.”

The head of his co*ck, so hot that she shivers, bumps her mound. This is all wrong, far from what she intended, but her desire is unchanged, her stomach knotted with it. Balancing on one leg, she works a boot off against her shin. Daryl gazes down at her face, his eyes heavy-lidded, one hand at the base of his co*ck, and he startles when the boot thumps to the floor. She lets her jeans fall to her ankles and draws out her foot so she can spread her legs properly.

The light in the bunker entrance is cloud light, the moon filtered through rain, more shadow than it is light. But still, her legs bare, she is afraid, and she reaches quickly for his shaft to hold his attention there, stroking it, her hand caressing his knuckles each time she draws her fingers upwards from the base where he grips it. His eyes flutter shut, and she brings her other hand to her mouth, spitting into it, smoothing the saliva over his length and drawing his precum into it.

His hand, resting on the wall, moves suddenly, to her shoulder and then to her ribs, sliding down to her waist. She waits for him to reach under her top, but he doesn’t. Instead, he releases his co*ck, puts his other hand at her waist, and lifts her.

She loops her arms around his neck reflexively, gasping in fright, locking her legs around his waist for fear of being dropped or thrown. But though he backs her against the wall, he does so gently, shifting his hands to cushion the bruised midsection of her back from the hard concrete. His co*ck is trapped between them, and then he raises her and jerks his hips back and his tip is nudging her labia apart as she hides her face in his neck.

The anger seems to be gone from him. He is in pieces, the way he has been each time they have had sex, trembling and sweating; but his arms are solid around her, as if he knows she fears being tossed to the ground. As his co*ck pushes her open, the head catching partway in before it stretches her enough to enter her entirely, an ache spreads through her abdomen, gravity pushing her onto him. She is not wet, but the saliva and precum are enough for him to inch into her, and as he moves deeper, through the agonising burn of it, she feels a whisper of what she wanted: connection with him, a way to show him what she doesn’t know how to tell him.

He stops halfway inside her, his shoulders rock hard beneath her arms, and she knows she will have to finish the movement for him. She presses her face against his neck, his whiskers scratching her forehead, his sweat warm salt on her tongue, and she lets herself drop in his arms, her hips rocking as she impales herself fully on his co*ck. The head hits her limit with bruising suddenness, pushing her wide open in her deepest parts, and she sags against Daryl’s chest, giving herself over to him, nuzzling the side of his neck like an animal identifying its mate. He curses, a thin string of words that don’t matter, and twitches inside her, rubbing against her cervix. She can feel every part of him, her walls clinging to his shaft so tightly that she is surprised he can move at all.

But move he does, with a slowness, a care, that makes her hug him tighter, her fingers buried in his hair. She tenses as he withdraws his co*ck, waiting for the drag of it to tear her, waiting for him to use her as Ed did. Instead, the movement never accelerates, never turns violent. He pulls out until just the head of his co*ck is inside her, and then he sinks back into her, groaning, crushing her against his chest as he opens her up again. She can feel him in her belly, in her spine, in the arches of her feet, as though he is lodged in her bones and marrow, shaping her to his need. Against his neck, her mouth is open, her tongue flicking across a vein in his throat as she pants, as she accepts him just as she wants to.

He does not move his hands from her waist, does not slide them down to cup her naked ass, or work them under the layers of clothing covering her top half. She has not fully appreciated his strength until now. He uses the wall to brace them both, but to keep her back from being hurt, he takes the bulk of her weight himself, and seems unaffected by it in his movements, in the long, aching slide of his shaft in and out of her.

By the time he comes, she feels turned inside out by the drag on her insides. Daryl has not rubbed her raw, the way Ed used to, but he is so much bigger than her husband was that he possesses her in an entirely new way, her walls throbbing around him, her skin hot and sensitive as he stretches her and stretches her. On his final thrust, he gives a throaty cry, abandoning his leisurely pace to ram into her, his release hitting her limit a split second before the head of his co*ck does. He seems to grow inside her, the pulsing of his shaft shuddering through her, and she arches her back involuntarily, lifting her face from his neck for the first time as her head falls backwards. She should be bleeding; it is all she has known when she has been this full before, toyed with by Ed. But instead she feels the soft heat of Daryl’s cum soothing her insides, the sounds of their bodies moving suddenly slick and loud.

Daryl adjusts his arm around her back, one hand cupping her head and bringing it back to his shoulder as he holds her. She clutches handfuls of his sweater. Through an aching haze, she finally understands her desire: that what she hated most about being raped by Ed was not the pain but the intimacy of it, the way he soiled and marked and claimed her, the closeness between them as he bit her breasts and came inside her. With Daryl, tonight, it was that same intimacy she craved, as only he could provide it, with a tenderness she is only just starting to comprehend.Yours. She kisses the damp skin of his throat as he softens inside her, and when he withdraws his co*ck, she is gaping and cold, her entrance fluttering as it tries to close.

“Daryl?” she whispers. His head is bent, his eyes closed, his arms still locked around her and his fingertips digging into her skull. Stiffly, she unwraps her legs from around his waist and drops her feet to the floor, cum tricking down her thighs. “Daryl.”

He lifts his head and looks down at her. Against her bare skin, his co*ck is half hard and sticky, heated by the inside of her body. Slowly, she lifts her hands to his face. His cheeks are flushed, his breath ragged. When she kisses him, he freezes, his lips dry and unresponsive beneath hers until the last second, when they soften and part a little, a quiet sound escaping him. The kiss is chaste, perhaps foolishly after what they just did. But it is gentle and sweet, and her fear of tongue and teeth and force fades as she feels his mouth tremble against hers.

His hands drift back to her waist. Her eyes are closed, their faces a shadow away from each other, their breath mingling. They sway slightly, and his hands drop lower, to the bare skin of her hips and then round to her ass, skimming over the scars she never wants him to see, his fingertips stopping at her cleft as he grunts, his hips shifting forwards, his co*ck hardening again.

“Please.” She struggles to say no, the inclination beaten out of her by Ed, but she dares to now, her muscles clenched with panic. “No.”

Daryl steps back, releasing her, his expression bewildered as though he has just woken up.

“Sorry. sh*t. Sorry, I—got lost.” His eyes drop to her mound, to the wet streaks on her skin, and he looks away quickly. She pulls up her underwear and jeans without speaking, her panties soaking up cum, her pelvis aching.

“It’s okay,” she says as she does up her pants. Her fingers are shaking. “Just don’t, don’t uh—please.”

“I know.” He tucks his co*ck back in his pants. His face is red. She could feel the calluses on his palms as he held her ass. She wonders whether he felt the ridged scars, and then chides herself bitterly for being stupid. Of course he did. “I’m sorry.”

She goes to him then, lonely, somehow, even as part of him still lingers inside her, and she lifts her face to his. This time, he kisses her first, the movement of his mouth towards hers jerky and hesitant, providing plenty of opportunity for her to change her mind. She doesn’t. As his lips press against hers, he strokes the curls back from her temple with one hand, his thumb lingering on the skin, and for the first time, she thinks:maybe.

Chapter 33

Chapter Text

Hershel dies on Friday, the same day Carl and Daryl get sick. Just before the old man breathes his last, his fever drops, his skin fading to a soft pink, his forehead cool for the first time in days. But each inhalation is a thin whistle, and an hour later, the old man shudders, coughs a bright splatter of blood onto the sheet covering him, and dies.

Carol only hears the details of his passing later, because when she wakes to the sound of Maggie wailing, Daryl is still asleep, his breath rasping strangely in his chest. In the driver’s seat of the RV, he lies huddled against the door, and though he twitches as Carol places a hand on his cheek, he does not wake. Against her palm, fire burns under his skin.

Crouching between the car seats as Maggie sobs in the back of the RV, Carol whispers Daryl’s name, stroking sweaty strands of hair off his brow. His eyes, bleary and bloodshot, open a little, but only for an instant. Carol picks up his canteen from the floor beside the seat and unscrews it, leaning over him to lift his head. He moans.

“Try to drink.” She cannot keep the panic from her voice, the horror at how fast he got sick. Was he already unwell last night in the entrance building? Did she fail to notice the beginning of a fever? “You need to stay hydrated.”

Water dribbles down his chin as she tips the bottle gradually, but he swallows, and she murmurs encouragement to him. She can feel his pulse beneath her fingertips where they cradle his skull, his perspiration trickling between soft strands of hair. When he turns his face from the canteen, she lays his head back against the seat and closes the water bottle, putting it down at her feet.

“You’re going to be okay,” she whispers. His eyes are sunken, and the lids look gluey and purplish. She wants to cry like Maggie. Instead, she kisses Daryl’s cheek, imagines his blood turning to steam in his veins, and leaves the cab.

Rick, Lori and Shane are on the grass outside the bunker, T-Dog coming over from his post at the gate, and through the door of the RV Carol can hear Andrea’s soothing voice talking to Maggie and Glenn.

“Carl’s sick.” Lori’s eyes are wild, her hair tangled in a half-ponytail, and she fixes her eyes on Carol as though she expects her to be able to help. “We need medicine.”

“So’s Daryl,” Carol replies. Her hands, she realises, are trembling. She can still feel his fever in her fingertips, on her mouth. “Where’s Sophia?”

The brunette stares at her, and then turns to Rick.

“We need to take Carl to that place. That town. They’ll have medicine.”

Rick holds up a hand. “Now we don’t know that for—”

“Threedays, Rick,” Lori says shrilly, her voice cracking as she gestures towards the doorway of the RV. “And now he’s dead.Dead.” She starts to weep, and Rick pulls her into his arms. Carol watches Shane turn towards her on some instinct he cannot restrain, and then tuck his hands into his pockets, scowling as he looks away from the couple.

Andrea appears in the doorway of the van, her eyes damp.

“Carol? Maggie’s asking for you.”

Carol nods and looks at Rick. “I need help moving Daryl so he can lie down properly,” she says quietly. “And I think Lori might be right. Carl, Daryl, they need treatment we can’t give them.” She swallows a lump in her throat. “Please.”

She goes into the RV before the deputy can reply. Andrea gives her arm a squeeze and exits, leaving her with Glenn and Maggie. They are sitting on either side of Hershel’s body on the bed, the woman’s face swollen with crying.

“Can—you—?” Maggie points at Carol’s knife and her face crumples. “I can’t do it and I don’t want Glenn to do it.”

It takes a moment for Carol to understand what the other woman is asking, and her eyes well up as she does.

“Of course,” she says. “When you’re ready.”

She turns away as the couple say their final goodbyes to the old man, listens to Maggie whisper to him about Beth and her mother. Carol thinks of Merle, and wonders whether Daryl has lost other family to the virus, family she doesn’t even know about. She rests a hand against the partition between the RV’s interior and the cab.

“Okay.” It is Glenn, leading Maggie towards the entrance to the van. Carol hugs the other woman as they pass her, and then she is alone with Hershel’s body, the voices outside fading from her notice.

As she approaches the bed, she hears—though it cannot possibly be real—the wheeze of someone breathing, in time with her footsteps up the length of the van. At the foot of the bed, she stops and stares down at Hershel, the breathing so loud in her ears that she is uncertain, suddenly, whether the old man is in fact dead. Slowly, she draws her knife and climbs onto the mattress beside him, kneeling where Maggie has been sitting. The man’s skin is waxen and solid-looking, as though everything that was fluid in him is slowly turning to stone. But as Carol shifts the knife in her grasp, swallowing, a tremor passes over his face.

“Hershel?” she whispers. She shakes her head to try and dislodge the sound of breathing from her ears. Her fingers are sweaty in the brass knuckles of her knife. Cautiously, she lays her left hand on the sheet covering his chest, feeling for a heartbeat, for the rustle of phlegm as he inhales. His eyes open at her touch, his head turning towards her. But his irises are filmy, the sound he makes an inhuman groan, and she sinks the blade into his temple before he has fully opened his mouth. It goes in easily, this deft slide of her wrist so different to the frantic stabbing of her fight in the woods two days ago.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. The RV is silent.

She covers Hershel’s face with the sheet and cleans her knife at the sink. Outside the van, Maggie is crying on Glenn’s shoulder, Rick and the others in a tight cluster a short distance from them. Carol nods at Glenn—it’s done—and goes over to the larger group, touching T-Dog’s shoulder so he will stand aside and she can hear what they are saying.

“…to ask for medicine.” Shane sounds irritated. Lori shakes her head.

“We have totakeCarl there. They won’t turn us away, not if they have a community full of children. They can’t look at a sick boy and refuse to help.” She addresses Rick. “I need to go back downstairs to him. Sophia and Dale are looking after him by themselves.” Carol bristles.So much for quarantine. “Rick, there’s no other choice.”

“I know.” The deputy’s voice is taut with frustration.

“If we take Carl, we’re taking Daryl too,” Carol says.

“We need a plan, we need—” Rick takes a deep breath. “We need people to stay here and guard the place. sh*t.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Dale, T-Dog, Maggie, Glenn, Andrea, you stay here. Bury Hershel. Clean up the RV.” He looks doubtfully at Carol. “If you insist on coming—”

“I do. And I want Sophia with me.”

She is not leaving her child here, not when Sophia might already be sick herself. Rick shakes his head.

“Fine. Carol, Sophia, Shane, Lori, Daryl, me. We’ll go to Thomasville. Request medicine. Maybe we can offer to trade…something.” He waves a hand vaguely. “Meat, if Daryl recovers.”

“When,” Carol says, and is surprised when Lori’s voice overlaps with hers, saying the same thing.When. They cannot afford to imagine anything else.

“When.” Rick’s voice lacks conviction, and he turns away from the circle towards the bunker when he has spoken. “Get ready to go. We leave in an hour.”

xxxx

Shane and T-Dog get Daryl into the back of the Chevy, laying him on a spare foam mattress from the RV. There isn’t room in the cab for both him and Carl, since the boy needs to lie down on the back seat, and Carol and Sophia climb into the truck bed. Sophia watches in silence as Carol lifts Daryl’s head into her lap, her back against the rear window of the cab, the glass seeping cold through her sweater. Daryl is unconscious, his fever raging unchecked—like Hershel was when he had already been sick for a whole day.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Carol asks her daughter, stroking Daryl’s hair and trying to distract both herself and Sophia from how ill he looks. The girl gazes at her mother’s hand.

“Is he going to be okay?” she whispers. Carol looks down at the man in her lap, his lips parted as he breathes in tiny pants.

“I hope so.” Her voice is scratchy and dry. “We’ll find him and Carl some medicine. Maybe a doctor.”

Sophia says nothing. The truck’s engine roars to life, the vehicle shuddering as Rick drives it towards the gate, and Daryl twists onto his side, hugging Carol’s bent knee with both arms, moaning as he presses his face against her thigh. She bends over him, smoothing her palm over the curve of his spine.

“It’s okay. We’re going to get help.” Her throat aches. “I’m going to make sure you get help.”

The drive to Thomasville is quick compared to the trek she made through the woods with Daryl and Shane, yet it is still too long. A cold wind whips over the cab of the Chevy as Rick drives, and Sophia comes to huddle next to Carol, trying to shelter against the rear window. Behind the glass, Lori sits with Carl’s head in her lap. Daryl does not make another sound as they travel, but lies with his arms tangled around Carol’s legs, his head rocking with the movement of the vehicle.

Gradually, the woods thin out into farmland, the low, straggly remains of peanut bushes in still-perceptible rows, blue and brown billboards declaring that they are the property of Mcnu*tty’s. Behind the truck, the hill they just ascended rises, and Carol blinks against a dust cloud as Rick lets the Chevy coast downhill, picking up speed. When the road flattens out again, the truck slows, and swings left.Welcome to Thomasville.The Mcnu*tty’s logo is on the bottom of the sign, and a family of smiling peanuts waves from next to the name of the town. Carol takes Sophia’s hand and weaves their fingers together.

The truck drives only a little way further before it stops in the middle of the road. Carol twists around, peering over the top of the cab. A hundred metres away, a barricade of shipping containers blocks entrance to Thomasville. Four men are already exiting from a door in the centre bottom container, guns drawn.

“Get in the driver’s seat.”

Carol jerks round. Rick is standing next to the back of the Chevy.

“Lori has my gun. Get in the driver’s seat. If anything goes wrong, you leave.” Rick holds the edge of the truck box, his fingers white. “Hear me? Get outta here and get them back to the bunker.”

He holds out the keys to Carol, and she nods slowly. Daryl groans as she lifts his head and moves out from under it, though she lays it as gently as possible on the mattress. She allows herself a second to cup his face with one hand, to remember how effortlessly he held her last night as he moved inside her.

“I’ll stay with Daryl,” Sophia says.

“You need to get in the cab with me.” Carol hops over the side of the truck and holds out a hand to her daughter. “Quickly.”

The Thomasville men have stopped halfway between the town entrance and the truck. Rick and Shane are walking slowly towards them, hands raised.

“But Daryl—”

“Now, Sophia.”

The girl is tearful as she obeys, her fingers brushing across Daryl’s chest before she takes Carol’s hand and allows herself to be lifted over the side. The driver’s door is ajar. Carol pushes her child in first, and then climbs in herself. The cab smells of leather and exhaust fumes. Carl coughs, and Carol puts the key in the ignition, clicking the door shut. She doesn’t need to look at Lori to know the other woman is terrified.

Through the dusty windshield, they watch Shane and Rick get closer to the line of men. At the container wall, another group of men and women has appeared, all carrying firearms, their eyes on the newcomers. Carol’s gaze flicks to the side mirror as she calculates how quickly she could turn the truck, as she thinks of Daryl, unprotected in the back.Please don’t let there be any violence, she prays.Please please please.

Shane and Rick stop in front of the guards, their hands still raised, and one of the men pats them down, making sure they are unarmed. When he is satisfied, another man steps forward to talk to them, gesturing with his rifle at the truck. He is stocky and strong, his skin dark, his hair in cornrows. Rick glances back, his face pale and earnest, his mouth moving as he points at the Chevy.

“Should we get out?” Lori whispers. Carol shakes her head.

“No. Stay where you are.” Slowly, she winds down the driver’s side window, wincing as it squeaks slightly. The men do not notice. She can hear the murmur of Rick’s voice now, Shane making a sharp retort as one of the guards barks an instruction at them. The man who appears to be in charge, with the rifle pointed at Rick, looks over his shoulder at the people clustered by the containers. There are beads on the ends of his cornrows, and they glitter as the movement jostles them.

“Get the General!” he yells.

In the back of the truck, Lori whispers something under her breath—a prayer of her own, perhaps, or a curse. Carl coughs, harder this time.

“He’s burning up,” Lori says to Carol pleadingly. Carol looks over at Sophia, whose eyes are fixed on the men with the guns.

“We’ll be okay”

The girl’s response is to catch her breath. One of the men—tall, muscular, a blue and white bandanna covering his hair—has broken away from the group and is approaching the truck. Carol takes hold of the key, her fingers slippery with sweat. Rick turns, his hands up, and nods at her, but it is unclear whether he is encouraging her to stay or to go.

“sh*t,” she breathes. Something bumps the back of her car seat, and there is a sharp click. Carol glances back at Lori, who is holding Rick’s Colt, the safety released. “sh*t.”

The man in the bandanna gets closer, his boots scraping on the gravel. Carol’s gaze shifts between him and Rick, whose hands are now secured behind his back, but whose demeanour seems calm. Shane, similarly secured, is also watching the truck, his face unreadable.

“Sophia, get down on the floor.” They are words Carol has said to the child before—before today, before the world ended.Hide.Lock your door.Get down. The girl obeys as the man in the bandanna reaches the Chevy’s fender. His rifle is lifted, pointed at Carol through the windshield. Under her palm, the steering wheel of the truck is hot. Her feet are on the pedals.

“Get out!” The man’s face is angular, his cheekbones sharp, his eyebrows thick and dark.

“Put the Colt under my seat,” Carol murmurs. In the near distance, Rick is nodding at her again, more urgently. His mouth moves, but Carl is coughing and the words are lost. Slowly, Carol lifts her hands from the ignition and the wheel.

“I saidget outthe truck!” The man is at her window suddenly, the barrel of the rifle jabbing her upper arm.

“Okay. Okay.” Carol’s raised hands shake, but her voice is gentle and assured. “There’s a sick boy in the backseat. A little girl up front here with me.” She wets her lips. “My friend in the back is pregnant. The man in the truckbed is also sick.”

The man’s eyes dart to Lori, and he turns to look back at his companions.

“One of ‘em’s pregnant!” he calls. At the same time, there is a stirring of the crowd near the container barrier, people standing aside as a square-shouldered figure emerges through the door. Rick and Shane turn back towards the containers, and Carol squints through the dirt on the windshield, because there is something familiar about the man, the heavy brow and receding hairline, the swagger that seems threatening more than merely confident. Lori stirs in the back seat.

“Is that—?”

“If it ain’t Officer Friendly come to visit after all this time.” Merle’s voice is unmistakable, the words laden with derision. The rifle barrel jabs Carol’s arm again.

“Get out or I’ll drag you out,” snarls the man in the bandanna. Carol unlocks the door and stumbles out. Sophia stays where she is, silent and unmoving.Good girl.

Standing on the road, Carol can see Merle more clearly. He has stopped at Rick and Shane and is talking to them and the guards. His right forearm is covered by some kind of metal sheath that gleams dully, straps cutting across the metal, his shirt sleeve rolled up to his elbow.

The man beside Carol bangs on Lori’s window.

“You too! Get out!”

Merle turns to look at them, his face keen and hungry, and Carol knows that Rick has told him Daryl is here. Lori’s door opens as Merle starts towards the Chevy, his pace quicker than it was before. The brunette, her hands raised, stands slightly behind Carol, her belly brushing Carol’s side. The man with the rifle waits for Merle.The General, Carol realises, and has a wild urge to laugh.

“Wellhell.” Merle reaches them, jerking his head at the armed man, who goes back to his companions and leaves the women with Daryl’s brother. The metal sheath on his arm has a knife attached to it. “Long time, Lori. Betcha missed me.” His eyes skate over Carol, and then he frowns, studying her more carefully. “Carol?” He looks her up and down as she lowers her hands, fighting the urge to cover herself by folding her arms across her chest.

“Hello, Merle,” she says. “Daryl’s sick. He’s in the back of the truck. Has your community got medicine?” She blinks. “He—Hershel died this morning.”

Merle looks at her a moment longer, his frown deepening as though he is trying to figure something out, and then he passes them and goes to the side of the truck bed.

“Darylina,” he mutters after a moment. “You look like sh*t.”

Carol does not bother to point out that Daryl is unconscious; Merle’s words were spoken to himself. When he looks back at her, his expression is troubled.

“We got medicine. Doctors.” He looks at Lori’s belly. “But overall it ain’t up to me. Best I can do is send you over to the holdin’ pen till the boss is back.”

“The boss?” Lori says faintly. Merle grunts.

“Aka,” he says. “Runs this place.”

Abruptly, he yells at the guards. “Ronnie! Get over here!” The man in the bandanna lopes back towards them. “Resta you walk those two over to the holdin’ pen. Ronnie’ll drive the ladies behind you.”

xxxx

The holding pen is nicer than it sounds: a barn between two fields, a couple hundred metres from the outskirts of the town. They reach the building along a narrow dirt track. The barn has been converted in rudimentary fashion into a kind of hostel. There is a loft across one half, containing a row of beds, and at ground level there is a simple kitchen at one end, and more beds lined up at the other. On most of the beds there are stuffed toys, missing ears and eyes and limbs, and a sagging bookshelf displays the colourful spines of what appear, mostly, to be children’s books. The barn doors are heavy wood, and a metal gate has been welded across them, which slides with a screech along a runner.

Merle, a rag tied over his nose and mouth, his hand in a leather glove, leads them inside. Ronnie and another man, similarly covered, bring Daryl inside none too gently, and dump him on a bed. Carol starts towards him, but Sophia is hanging on her, paralysed with fear, and Merle stands between her and his brother, watching Rick carry Carl in from the truck.

“Aka will come round some time,” Merle drawls. “Tomorrow, next day, hard to say. An’ he’ll decide.”

“Decide what?” Shane says. “The kid ain’t got two days.”

“Oh you’ll get medicine right away,” Merle says, and there is a short, startled silence. “Doc’ll drop it off in a while. You gotta write down their symptoms so he knows what to send.”

“What has to be decided then?” Carol asks slowly. “By…Aka?”

Merle squints at her, his gaze dropping briefly to the child at her side.

“Whether you get to stay.” He sniffs. “Aka might letya stay.” He waves a hand at Sophia. “Got lotsa kids here. Like her.”

Carol pulls the girl more tightly against her side. Merle looks over at Rick and Shane, who are watching warily as the other guards leave the barn.

“Ain’t life funny.” The older Dixon takes a step towards the cops. His voice is colder now, and he lifts his metal prosthesis in front of him. “Y’all left me on that roof to die, and here you are beggin’ me to save your kid.”

“An’ your ownbrother,” Shane says. Merle co*cks his head to one side. The air between the men is thick with hostility, Merle’s knife tilted so it traps the light in its blade.

“He went back,” Carol blurts out. Merle turns quickly at the sound of her voice, his eyes beady and faded blue. She glances at Daryl, ignoring the pressure in her chest at the sight of him sprawled on the bed. “He made everyone go back to find you.” Her eyes well up, suddenly and inexplicably, and some of the anger in Merle’s face gives way to discomfort. “But you’d already…” Her gaze settles on his arm, and he sneers.

“Cut my damn hand off? Yeah. Pity he didn’ get there sooner.” He studies her for a second. “Where’s your asshole husband?”

“Dead,” she says hoarsely. He laughs.

“Good.” He inhales loudly through his nose. “Paper in the kitchen. Write down their symptoms. I got places to be.”

“TheGeneral,” mutters Shane mockingly, and as Merle turns, Rick steps in front of the cop, one hand lifted in a gesture of conciliation. Carol, half dragging Sophia with her, goes to the kitchen. There is a magnetic notepad on the fridge, a pencil in a holder at its side, the kind of notepad she used to use for grocery lists. Toadstools line the bottom of the page, a gnome smoking a pipe on one of them.

“We’ve had a stressful coupla days,” the deputy says. “Okay? No disrespect intended.”

Shane snorts softly.Fever, Carol writes, turning her back on the men. Now that she is no longer looking at them, she becomes aware that Lori is singing softly to Carl, her voice wafting through the cavernous space.Congestion. Sophia squirms between Carol and the fridge, wriggling into the space as though she wants to disappear. Carol uses her free hand to hug the child to her chest.Wet cough. Laboured breathing.

Merle leaves with the list when it is finished. They listen to him lock them inside, the gate screeching and the clank of the chain securing it. Carol is at Daryl’s bed before the sound of the truck has faded, easing his boots off, stroking his hair off his forehead. His skin seems to flicker, flame-like, against her palm, and she looks up at her daughter, who is standing wide-eyed in the kitchen watching, her hands twisting in front of her.

“Bring me a glass of water, please, Sophia,” Carol says in a low voice. Shane is heading upstairs to the loft, feet thumping on the ladder, and Rick is still standing near the door, lost in thought.

“Merle Dixon,” he murmurs, and rubs the back of his neck. “MerleDixon.”

“Did you tell him about the bunker?” Carol asks him, holding out her hand for the water as Sophia brings it to her. Rick shakes his head and comes over to the row of beds.

“No. Only that we were camped nearby when Hershel got sick.” He looks worried for a moment. “If Merle goes past the bunker he’ll recognise the RV no question.”

“He thinks we wanna stay.” Shane’s voice descends loudly from the loft. “Dumbass. Like I’d wanna stay somewhere people call him theGeneral.”

“Maybe some of uswillwant to stay.” Lori’s silence of the last half hour is broken. “If they have a proper doctor.”

“We barely know anythin’ about them yet. About this Aka person.” Rick sighs, perching on the edge of the bed next to Carl’s. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”

They are practised at it by now, making a place home, acknowledging the temporary nature of it while still claiming it as theirs. Sophia is put in charge of investigating the kitchen, the canned food and coffee and tea, while Shane lays a fire in the woodstove. Lori makes Carl comfortable and lies down next to him, sleeping away the stress of the morning, one hand on the side of her belly. And Carol wipes down Daryl’s face with a cool cloth, cleaning away the sweat and dust, smoothing back his hair as she dampens it. He rolls his head towards her, though he does not wake, and she is grateful that none of the others make her self-conscious for what she is doing—for the way her hands linger on him, the way she whispers to him under the sound of water boiling in the kettle, the way she holds his hand in hers as she drinks the tea Sophia makes, listening every moment for the sound of someone delivering the medicine he needs.

Chapter 34

Chapter Text

The swiftness with which the medicine delivered to the barn that afternoon works is a reminder of how vulnerable they are, without it, to the simplest diseases—as if the world were brand new again, none of its dangers yet defeated. The doctor sends steroids to open Daryl’s and Carl’s airways, decongestants to clear them, and ibuprofen to bring down their fevers so they are lucid enough to drink electrolyte solution. The medicine is delivered in a box through a hatch next to the barn doors, unlocked and slammed shut again onceRick has received the delivery. A note tells them to ask for the doctor if the patients’ symptoms don’t improve.

They eat cans of beans for dinner, warmed in a dented microwave, and potatoes baked in the woodstove. Carol makes herself sit with Rick, Shane and Sophia at the round dining table, making sure she can see Daryl from her seat. Lori stays with Carl, wearily scooping food into her mouth as she sits hunched on the end of his bed. Merle does not return, and Aka does not come. Occasionally, Carol hears footsteps outside: guards, though it is impossible to tell how many there are.

Rick washes up, telling Carol to get some rest, an unexpected gesture that bewilders her for a moment. As she stares at him, dazed, he takes the sponge from her hand.

“Been a long day,” he says, and she remembers the knife sliding into Hershel’s temple. His death feels like years ago, the damp grass of the compound a million miles away. She lets Rick nudge her out the way and leaves him at the sink, beckoning Sophia to accompany her to the bathroom.

The showerhead is rusty, and the water runs brown for a moment, the pipes juddering and thumping. The meagre spray remains stubbornly tepid, and Sophia washes quickly with a bar of homemade soap, leaving Carol to take her turn next. The wash is hardly refreshing; instead, it reminds Carol of her tired body, her aching muscles, and, as her hand skims between her thighs, Daryl.

She turns off the water so as not to waste any as she cries, hard, silent sobbing in both fear and relief. When she is done, she turns the water back on and scrubs her face. She has taken too long, indulged herself. The bruise on her back is tender as she pulls a rough towel across it, and her clothes feel grubby against her skin.

Daryl is asleep when she goes to him—not unconscious, but asleep, his face pale, his skin warm instead of blazing hot. He is feverish, but his temperature has dropped, and his breathing is noisier, the phlegm in his lungs moving more easily. Sophia has chosen a bed opposite Daryl’s and tucked herself in with a pink stuffed elephant. Carol kisses her swiftly on the cheek, and Sophia catches her hand as she turns away.

“Is Merle a good person now?” she whispers, and Carol feels a wrenching guilt for having been so consumed by Daryl’s illness that she has not taken the time to reassure her child. She crouches beside the bed, and holds Sophia’s hand, wondering what the girl remembers of Daryl’s brother from the quarry. Yelling, most likely. Swearing andstay away, his high-pitched giggle across the campsite at night when he was high.

“Merle loves Daryl.” She knows it is true as she says it, remembers it being all that made the Dixons relatable to her at first: that despite the arguing and fighting, despite the way Merle liked to humiliate Daryl in front of the others, the brothers were fiercely loyal to each other. Loved each other.

Sophia frowns, needing more.

“He won’t let Daryl get hurt,” Carol murmurs. “And that means he probably won’t let us get hurt either.” She strokes her daughter’s hair, the strands slipping like water onto the pillow. “Sleep now, sweetheart.”

Sophia closes her eyes obediently, and Carol stays with her another few moments before tucking her hand next to the elephant and going, at last, to Daryl. The bed he is in is a single, like all the others, and he is too feverish for her to sleep pressed against him, but—not wanting to drag a bed closer for fear of disturbing the others with the noise—she hauls a mattress onto the floor.

She does not lie down at once, but sits, legs crossed, so her face is level with Daryl’s where he lies on his side. She watches him sleep. Rick turned off the naked bulbs hanging from the rafters when he finished washing up, so the only light in the barn now is the glow from the woodstove. It gives Daryl’s skin the appearance of health, the golden sheen he had at the end of summer. Carol cannot resist touching him, ghosting her thumb across his cheekbone, brushing her fingertips along his jaw.

A couple of rows back, Carl coughs in his sleep, and bedclothes rustle. Shane is up in the loft alone, avoiding the sick, or perhaps avoiding Rick and Lori. The cop is simmering with resentment at Merle’s apparent status in this place, but Rick has not taken the bait of his remarks, grimly ignoring them over dinner. All that matters to the deputy, Carol thinks, is that Carl is alive.

She sleeps after a while, lying down with reluctant relief, giving Daryl’s hand a final squeeze before letting it go. She wakes to darkness and cold, the fire burnt to ash and Daryl coughing and coughing, each spasm ending in a retch. She sits up and reaches for the canteen of fresh water on the floor beside the bed, scrambling to her feet as Daryl gags and spits up phlegm onto his pillow, pushing himself up on his hands as he does. He moans, and coughs again, bringing up more phlegm, and when Carol lays a hand on his back he cringes from her, disoriented and afraid.

“It’s me,” she says quietly, stroking his back and bringing the canteen towards his face. “You’re okay. It’s good to get it out.”

He stares down at the dark stain on his pillow, but lifts his chin obediently when she offers him water, swallowing until she is worried he will make himself sick. She does not touch him again, but as she screws the lid back onto the water bottle, he reaches for her, burying his face in her stomach, his arms wrapped around her waist. She drops the canteen onto the bed and hugs him, bending to kiss the crown of his head.

“Where are we?” His voice scrapes in his throat, rusty and sore, and he speaks into her abdomen.

“Thomasville,” she says. “We brought you and Carl for medicine.”

“He okay?” Daryl lifts his face to squint up at her. She glances over at the bed containing Carl.

“He’s had medicine like you. His fever is down.”

Daryl releases her and looks around the barn as she takes his pillow off the bed, replacing it with a clean one.

“Soph’s sick?” He tries to get up, panic in his voice, his eyes on the sleeping girl in the next row, and Carol lays a hand on his shoulder.

“No. She’s not sick. I brought her with us because I didn’t want to leave her behind.”

Coaxing him back into a supine position, she sits on the edge of the bed. His eyes look bruised even in the gloom, the lids heavy.

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” she whispers, and wipes the back of one hand across her face. Her knuckles come away wet. Daryl’s brow creases as he studies her, and she leans down and holds him, resting her head on his chest, listening to the faint rasp of his lungs. He brings a hand to her cheek, cradling her against him, and a moment later his fingers slip away as he drifts back into sleep.

xxxx

There are soft voices speaking near him. He listens for Carol’s, holding his breath. His lungs hurt, like someone is pressing down on a bruise inside him, and his mouth is dry.See if he’ll eat some oatmeal. Daryl exhales, his fingers curling around handfuls of blanket, and opens his eyes.

Above him are rafters, the high, vaulted ceiling of a house—no, a barn. Lightbulbs are tacked to the rafters here and there, and a tattered string of faded fabric blossoms is wound around the length of one beam. The lightbulbs are switched off; the space is lit by sunshine, pale enough that he knows it is morning, bright enough that he knows it is past dawn. He tries to remember what Carol said in the night. Thomasville. Medicine.I’m so glad you’re awake, her eyes awash with tears.

“Carol,” he says, the word dissolving into a cough. The voices cease, and he smells her before he sees her, strange soap and a thread of familiar citrus. A soft hand reaches for his brow and he blinks up at her: hair tousled, gaze anxious blue.

“How are you feeling?” she asks gently. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the cool texture of her skin, the afterimage of her eyes like stars behind his lids.

“Carol,” he mumbles, wishing he was strong enough to stand up and take her in his arms.

“Daryl?” Sophia. He opens his eyes again, and Carol’s hand lifts away from his forehead. The girl’s expression is earnest. “Are you feeling better?”

Carol leaves them, and he grips the blanket more tightly.

“Guess so,” he says to the child.Better than what?He remembers falling asleep in the cab of the RV, consumed by thoughts of how it felt to be fully inside Carol, how light she was in his arms, how she dropped herself onto his co*ck as though willing to split herself open for him. He remembers little after that: garish, incoherent dreams, the shake and roar of a vehicle, the sensation of his lungs straining for air. He licks his chapped lips. “How’s—Hershel?”

Sophia’s face falls, and she looks down at the edge of the mattress.

“He died,” she whispers. “Yesterday morning.”

f*ck. Daryl pushes down a sharp, unexpected grief at the news, and fumbles for the girl’s hand, patting it awkwardly as she toys with a loose thread in the blanket.

“Carl is sick too, but he’s eating proper food now.” Her face brightens slightly, and he moves his hand away from hers. “He’s sitting up.”

“You need to sit up too.” Carol is back, standing behind Sophia with three vials of pills in her hands. “And try to eat solid food so I can give you more meds.”

She slides an arm behind his back to help him shift into a seated position, and he has to fight the urge to turn his face into her neck and inhale her skin. Sophia stands watching, fetching another pillow to put behind him once he is upright. Like this, he has a better view of the barn. Rick and Shane are sitting at a round table near a rudimentary kitchen, and behind him he can hear Lori and Carl talking.

“Where’s—everyone else?” he asks.

“We left them at the bunker,” Sophia tells him. Carol is in the kitchen, dishing up oatmeal into a bowl. “To guard it.”

“How long we been here?” His chest rumbles with a cough, and he covers his mouth, swallowing salty phlegm.

“Since yesterday.” The girl sits down on the end of his bed. “Yesterday morning. AndDaryl—”

“Let him eat before we talk,” Carol says as she returns, smiling at her daughter. Sophia clamps her mouth shut and Carol sets a warm bowl in Daryl’s lap. Brown sugar is melting into the oatmeal in a glossy swirl.

“Can you manage?” Her voice is sweet, her hand resting beside his thigh as she bends over him. This time, he doesn’t fight the urge; he leans his forehead against her shoulder, his temple resting against her throat. Sighing, she weaves her fingers through his hair, and holds him for a moment. He can feel her pulse inside his skull.

“Come,” she whispers just as he is about to lift an arm to tug her further down. “You need to eat.”

She is flushed when he lifts his head, her gaze flicking to the men watching them from the kitchen table, and then to Sophia, whose eyes are round and curious. Carol scoops up a mouthful of cereal and Daryl shakes his head.

“Can do it myself.” He takes the spoon from her, his fingers clumsy at first, and as she straightens up, folding her hands in front of her, he catches her eye. “Thanks,” he adds quietly, and her shuttered expression softens.

He manages half a bowl, drinking water after each mouthful, replacing the bitterness of bile on his tongue with sugar. Carol busies herself dragging the mattress she seems to have slept on back onto its bedframe, and folding blankets, never moving very far from him. The other occupants of the barn are strangely quiet, the silence wearing on Daryl until he is too nervous to eat any more. He puts down the spoon, and Carol turns as it clinks against the side of the bowl.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and gestures weakly at the men in the kitchen, the silent child at the foot of his bed. “Tell me.”

He looks at Carol. She takes the bowl, putting it on a neighbouring bed, and sits next to him.

“We haven’t met the leader of this place yet. Aka.” She looks down at her hands. “We’re locked up here waiting for him.” Her gaze rises to Daryl’s face, and she smiles a little uncertainly. “But we met his—I guess his second-in-command. The General, they call him.” Her hand slips into Daryl’s. “It’s Merle, Daryl. He’s alive. He’s living here.”

xxxx

Merle returns in the middle of the afternoon, alone. Daryl managed to get up and move around after he had eaten, but was back in bed, sleeping on and off, by lunchtime, as much with shock at the news about his brother as with the need to regain his strength. Carol longs to be alone with him, to have a conversation without the others watching and eavesdropping.

When they hear the roar of an engine outside, as the sunbeams through the high, dusty windows begin to harden into gold, Rick goes to the door, turning to face them.

“Don’t tell them where the bunker is, and don’t tell them who’s there.” His voice is urgent. “Or how many of us there are.”

Shane, who is idly building towers out of a set of wooden blocks on the kitchen table, snorts, and topples his newest creation. Lori is with Carl, whose health has improved even more rapidly than Daryl’s, and who has demanded that his mother read to him for most of the afternoon.

Merle has a driver with him, but the man stays in the battered Ford parked outside the barn. Sophia, lying on her stomach on the bed nearest Daryl’s, drawing, sits up when she sees the older Dixon, her posture stiff, and Carol goes to join her on the bed. Merle jerks his head in greeting and looks straight at Daryl. He has a bandanna tied across his nose and mouth.

“Hiya brother,” he drawls, and strides over to the bed.

“Merle.” Daryl coughs and starts to pull the covers back to stand up. Merle reaches the bedside and jabs the point of his prosthesis into the blanket, pinning it to the mattress.

“Ain’t no need to stand on occasion,” he says. Daryl stares at his metal forearm, and Merle lifts and turns it so his brother can get an eyeful. “You like it, huh? Chafes like a bitch.”

“I’m sorry.” Daryl’s voice is hoarse, whether from inflammation or emotion, Carol doesn’t know. Merle sneers, the movement concealed by his mask but clear in his eyes.

“Took your sweet time comin’ to help ol’ Merle, though.” He glances at Carol. “If what the li’l mouse said was even true.”

Daryl looks at him in confusion and follows his gaze to Carol. She catches his eye and shakes her head.Leave it.

“Came soon as we could,” Daryl says slowly. “How’d you—where’d you go? After—your hand…”

“Here an’ there.” Merle shrugs. “Met some of Aka’s people on the road an’ they sorted out my arm.” He frowns suddenly and turns away from Daryl to address the room. “Ain’t here to reminisce. Here to tell you you’re stayin’ for another three days. If no one else gets sick, Aka’ll come by then.” He pauses. “You need a message delivered to anyone? I can send one of my men.”

“No.” Rick’s reply is swift and final. Merle considers him for a moment.

“What happened to the resta them from the quarry?” He holds out his hands, turning to encompass the whole group. “You lose ‘em all?”

“We gotta group,” Shane says from the table, and Rick shoots him a furious look. “We gotta place. We just ain’t tellin’ you sh*t about them,General.”

Daryl’s brother laughs, the nasty, rattling laugh Carol remembers from the quarry, and shrugs.

“Whatever. Once you’ve seen Thomasville, I wager you’ll wanna stay anyway.” He co*cks his head to one side. “If Aka’ll have you.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

They turn as one towards Lori, who has said little since they arrived here. Merle’s eyes drop to her belly.

“That’s for him to say,” he tells her shortly. “But I’m pretty sure he ain’t gonna turnyouaway. Not with a kid on the way.”

He sniffs, and his gaze settles on Carol and Sophia as he looks away from Lori. Carol watches him notice their proximity to Daryl, the same puzzled look as yesterday on his face.

“Merle.” Daryl says the name with a volume, an intensity, which Carol recognises are designed to draw Merle's attention from herself and her daughter. She lowers her eyes, blinking back tears as she remembers trying to distract Ed from Sophia in the same way. “We gonna get a—a chance to talk?”

Daryl’s face flushes as he asks, and Merle’s expression shifts to automatic disdain at the suggestion. But he hesitates, and when he replies it is not with the insult Carol feared.

“Later,” he says dismissively. “I got work to do. I’ll come back tonight an’ you can tell me how you sucked a cop's dick so he’d keep you ‘round.”

Lori gasps, and Daryl coughs, hunching forward, his cheeks scarlet. As Merle moves towards the barn door, Carol gets up and opens Daryl’s water bottle for him, rubbing her hand up and down his back as the spasms pass through his chest. Merle turns at the exit, and watches Daryl gulp water from the bottle in Carol’s hand, the penny dropping at last.

“Jesus Christ.” The amazement in his voice is almost funny, but Carol feels the creep of shame up her spine. Shane chuckles.

“Oh your brother’s beenbusy,” the cop says. Daryl’s muscles clench under Carol’s hand, and he pushes the bottle away.

“f*ckin’—asshole,” he rasps at Shane. Merle stares at his brother in astonishment. Carol takes her hand off Daryl and moves away from him, but he catches hold of the edge of her shirt, and she turns back in surprise. His hand finds hers, and he holds Merle’s gaze as he closes his fingers around hers.

“Jesus H. Christ,” repeats Merle softly, and leaves.

xxxx

Daryl sleeps for a few hours between Merle’s visits, a deep, disorienting sleep that ends at dusk. There is no one near him when he wakes, just the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, and the sound of Carl and Sophia murmuring to each other at the boy’s bed. Daryl wants Carol, with the same childlike need he felt this morning; but Rick comes over instead and offers him a glass of water.

“She’s cookin’,” the deputy says awkwardly. Daryl nods, drinking the water too quickly and spluttering as he lowers the glass. He saw Carol’s face when Merle realised there was something between them—saw her fade, vanishing into herself. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken her hand. Maybe he should have pretended she was nothing but a friend tending to him. But he is proud that she is his, and the fool in him wanted Merle to know it.Look at me now, brother.

He hands the glass back to Rick and swings his legs off the bed, resting his elbows on his knees as he stares at the floor. His feet are bare, his boots placed neatly near the foot of the bed. The virus has left him tired, but he is weary in a deeper way too, exhausted by how seeing Merle again has made him feel. He loves his brother, felt their blood tie like a physical pull when Merle entered the barn. But in the months since Atlanta, he has outgrown the version of himself he sees in Merle’s eyes—that much was clear as soon as they saw each other. His brother’s gaze felt stifling, somehow, expectant in a way that filled Daryl with dread.

He stands up, his legs shaky for a moment, and makes his way towards the bathroom at the back of the barn, past Carl and Sophia. The kids grin at him as he passes. The boy’s face looks thinner, but his colour is good. Daryl ducks his head in greeting, and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. In the mirror, his face is pasty white, his eyes shadowed, and his shirt is rumpled and stretched, soft with days of sweat and sleep. He splashes his face with cold water, drinking some, wondering briefly what the town’s water source is. A spring, perhaps, or the same aquifer that feeds the bunker.

There is a soft knock as he turns off the squeaky faucet, and he dries his face on the bottom of his shirt before opening the door. Carol stands there, blushing deeply.

“Uh, sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, to—interrupt, I just—”

He looks past her. No one is watching them. He stands aside and jerks his chin, and she enters the tiny room without hesitation. He shuts the door, turning to her, and she hugs him with a shuddering exhale, her arms careful, her cheek light on his chest.

“Sorry,” she whispers again.

He makes a sound in his throat intended to dismiss the apology, and leans into the embrace, pulling her against him sloppily. His arms are weak, but she lends her own strength to his efforts, holding him more tightly.

“Merle,” she murmurs after a moment, and lifts her head to look at Daryl’s face. Her expression is tender, sincere. “I’m so happy for you that he’s alive. He’s well.”

Daryl’s eyes slide from hers, and he nods stiffly, wishing all he felt was uncomplicated joy at his brother’s reappearance. Carol releases him slowly and steps back. Despite his illness, he feels a surge of desire at the sight of her breasts beneath her shirt, her jeans sitting low on her hips.

“Better get outta here,” he mutters, and she flushes, nodding rapidly, brushing past him so that she is out the door before it is fully open.

Merle arrives during dinner, coming inside to drop a bag just beyond the threshold, and fetch his brother for a conversation.

“Clothes,” he says when Rick approaches the bag. “Since you ain’t got your own.”

The night is chilly, and Daryl half-wishes, as he steps outside, that he’d wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, however pathetic it might have made him appear. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he realises how well guarded the barn is—men patrolling the walls as well as a wider perimeter, guns at their hips. The group, by contrast, is unarmed; Carol says their weapons were confiscated when they were brought to the holding pen.

Merle has driven up in a Jeep, its seats cold leather, the interior smelling of stale cigarette smoke. Daryl sits in the passenger seat and tries not to shiver as his brother slams the door and winds down his window. They will not, evidently, be driving anywhere. Merle takes a box of cigarettes off the dashboard and taps one out, tossing the box to Daryl before he lights up. The brand is the same one Merle has always smoked, Marlboro Red, and the familiar scent of the tobacco, ridiculously, makes Daryl’s eyes prick with tears. He puts the box back on the dashboard without taking one.

“They got cartons an’ cartons of that sh*t here,” Merle remarks. “Some guy from Virginia who worked at the factory bought his way in with a truckload.” He chuckles. “Sam. Never seen a man roll a joint as fast as him.”

Daryl glances at his brother. Merle’s eyes gleam black in the darkness, the glow of the cigarette revealing the grim line of his mouth.

“You kill that lady’s husband?” Merle asks. There is nothing but mild curiosity in his voice, and Daryl feels, not for the first time, a grudging admiration for the ease with which Merle has adapted to the lawlessness of this world.

“Bastard shot me,” he says. “Tried to take his kid and run. We stopped him.”

“We?” Merle takes a deep drag, squinting in the smoke. “You an' the cops? You ain't tellin’ me Mouse in there turned on her old man?”

Daryl doesn’t reply. He sees the blue sky, the wheeling birds. Carol on her knees in front of Ed. Blood on the walls. Merle sighs, and flicks ash out of the open window.

“Ain’t pleased to see those assholes again,” he says. “Don’t know that Aka will be either.” He shakes his head, chuckling. “Couldn’t believe it when the deputy said that was his wife. His kid. Damn.”

“What’s Aka’s deal?” Daryl asks. An insect hits the windshield, drawn by the light of the cigarette, its wings a brief, shadowy blur.

“Doctor.” Merle waves a hand vaguely. “Not a normal one, some kinda…mixed-up one.”

Daryl stares at him.

“Knows all kindsa medicine—not just American sh*t.” Merle frowns with frustration. “Chinese an’ African an’…all of it.” He takes a slow drag, holding the smoke in his mouth before speaking. “Real intelleck-choo-will.” He draws out the syllables sardonically. “‘S why he’s got me. He’s the brains, I’m the brawn.”

“For what?” Daryl asks suspiciously. Merle shrugs.

“Thomasville. We take in a lotta kids. Orphans. Need muscle to balance that out.”

Daryl grunts, which turns into a cough, and his brother peers at him through the haze.

“This place you got, what’s it like? How many people?”

The younger man looks down at his lap and says nothing. The silence grows until Merle tosses the butt of his cigarette out the window with a sharp flick of his wrist.

“Like that then, is it?” he says. “You’re his bitch now? Officer Friendly? Just like I thought.”

“Ain’t nobody’s bitch,” Daryl retorts. “But I ain’t dumb neither.”

“It’s dumb to trust your own brother?” Merle gives a bitter snort of laughter.

“You ain’t in charge here. An’ I don’t know sh*t about this Aka.”

“It ain’t enough that I do?” There is almost—almost—a note of genuine hurt in Merle’s voice, but Daryl has heard it hover there before, knows that if he could see his brother’s eyes clearly, they would be pale blue stone, giving nothing.

“Ain’t up to me, Merle. That ain’t how we make decisions.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I bet it’s a regular democracy you got goin’ on. Way I remember it, Shane called all the shots. But now he's second in command, eh?” The older Dixon looks sharply at Daryl. “That baby in Rick’s wife—it his or Shane’s?”

Daryl chews the inside of his cheek, and looks out the side window, ignoring the question. Merle cackles.

“Well, hell. What a fine f*ckin’ mess.” He laughs again, leaning back in his seat. “She screwin ‘em both?”

“Ain’t my business. Nor yours.”

Merle’s voice is suddenly serious. “Oh it is, brother. That in there is a powder keg ready to explode. You livin’ with it, it’s gonna make itself your business eventually.”

He sniffs and spits out his window. The cold in the car is damp now, sinking into Daryl’s bones, and he shivers involuntarily, a cough building in his lungs. Merle eyes him.

“All right, get the hell out. Open window better be enough for me not to have caught that sh*t.” He opens his door and Daryl does the same, climbing out the Jeep with a relief that makes him ashamed. They walk around the hood and hesitate there, facing each other in the darkness as one of Merle’s men unlocks the gate to the barn. The older Dixon scowls, and drags Daryl against him suddenly, one arm around his neck, the movement rough and his body quivering with tension. Affection has always been tangled up with violence for the brothers, with anger: that they should have to feel such things at all, hold any space within themselves for softness. For love. Merle’s embrace ends in a shove, Daryl stumbling backwards, the side of his neck aching from the pressure of his brother’s forearm.

“Take a shower,” Merle says as he turns back to the Jeep. “You f*ckin’ stink.”

Chapter 35

Chapter Text

They spend two days in a state of relative boredom, tension building between Rick and Shane because, cooped up in the barn, there is no way for them to escape each other. Lori ignores them both, spends her time near Carl, or sitting at the kitchen table staring out the window, her hair knotted and her clothes rumpled. Her son’s illness seems to have turned her inwards, and his recovery has not brought her back out of herself. Carol keeps an eye on her, and on their second full day in the holding pen, she goes to sit next to Lori at the table in the late afternoon. Shane is in the loft doing what sounds like a vigorous workout, Rick is playing cards with Sophia and Carl on one of the beds, and Daryl is asleep, curled up with his hands under his cheek.

Lori blinks as Carol places a mug of tea in front of her—peppermint, the scent cool and sharp, the steam drawing a veil across the brunette’s face for a second. Carol takes the nearest chair, so she can keep her voice low, and wraps her hands around the sides of her mug.

“How’s the baby?” she asks without preamble. Lori looks at her, smudges under her eyes, and shrugs.

“I don’t know,” she says. A tremble is just discernible in her voice. “I have no idea.” She rests a hand on the side of her bump and shifts her gaze to the mug of tea.

“Moving much?” Carol keeps the question light. Lori shrugs.

“Enough, I suppose.” She purses her lips, and lifts her mug to take a sip, but not before Carol notices her chin wobble.

“You know, when I was pregnant with Sophia—” Carol hesitates, fighting her reluctance to talk about it, to remember. “I struggled quite a bit during the second and third trimesters.”

Lori glances at her. The brunette’s eyes are shining, but her face is set, expressionless.

“It was a high-risk pregnancy?” she asks. Carol shakes her head.

“No, not—not medically.” She grimaces. “In other ways, maybe. Ed didn’t—he didn’t always seem to want a child. Got mad about it sometimes.”

Lori lowers her eyes, setting her mug down and smoothing her palms over her belly. Carol pushes on, her cheeks flaming.

“Mostly, though, I struggled with the idea of bringing her into that house. With that father.” She clears her throat. Bedsprings creak, and when she glances over, Daryl is watching her, his hair tousled, red imprints from his fingers on his cheek as he sits up. Carol looks away, but senses that he is listening. “There were days when I just—despaired.” She gives a humourless laugh. “Couldn’t see how she might survive it.”

“Rick is a wonderful father,” Lori says stiffly.

“Of course he is. Oh no, that’s not what I mean at all.” Carol reaches across and touches Lori’s hand where it rests against her bump. “It just occurred to me that bringing a baby into this world is perhaps a little harder than it was in the previous one.” She takes the brunette’s hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. “Your little son or daughter will have so many people protecting them. Loving them.” She leans forward, her voice gentle. “But you’re allowed to be scared. And if you want to talk to someone about that, or about anything, I’m always here.”

Lori’s fingers grip hers tightly for a second. The pregnant woman’s lashes are wet when she looks at Carol.

“With Carl, we worried about which stroller to buy.” She gives a damp laugh. “What music to play at the birth. With this one, I don’t even know how to prepare. Don’t know where or how the birth will happen, and what if something goes wrong and—” She presses a fist to her mouth, tears spilling over, and bends her head so her hair falls in a dull curtain across her profile.

“Oh honey.” Carol gets quietly out of her chair and takes the other woman in an awkward hug. “It’ll be okay. It will.”

Lori sniffs, accepting the hug, leaning so hard into Carol that she rocks on her feet. Across the room, Rick looks up from the card game, frowning anxiously, and Carol remembers his single-minded determination to get them to the bunker, to a place where Lori and his children might be safe.

The pregnant woman is more relaxed as they finish their tea, smiling while she tells Carol how fiercely she and Rick argued over the paint colour for Carl’s nursery. She does not acknowledge again what Carol revealed about her pregnancy with Sophia, and Carol is grateful for it, the discomfort of the admission still prickling under her skin. Everyone in the group knows what Ed was like, to some extent. And yet articulating it still makes Carol feel painfully vulnerable.

Daryl comes to her as she washes the mugs. Lori has gone to take a shower, having agreed to let Sophia do her hair afterwards, at Carol’s suggestion—the girl loves to comb and braid long hair, to pretend she is a stylist in a fancy salon. The water in the sink is lukewarm, and there is a dark ring around the plughole, fine scratches in the metal.

“Hey.”

She turns her head quickly at his voice, even though she knows he has spoken to try and pre-empt her fright, and he gives her a half smile. His chest is clearer today, his face less ashen.

“I’ll mix you some more electrolyte solution in a minute,” she says, her brow furrowing. She is worried he isn’t drinking or eating enough to replace what he lost during his fever. He comes closer, stands beside her so she can feel the heat of his body. She runs the sponge in her hand around the rim of a mug, watching the soap bubbles burst.

“You okay?” His voice is low enough that no one else can hear it, low enough that goosebumps rise on the back of her neck. She nods.

“Of course,” she replies. Daryl’s arm brushes hers, and she thinks of how angry he was when she offered herself to him in the entrance building. How completely his rage vanished as he thrust into her body. She is not enough for him, and she was too much for Ed, and the memory of her pregnancy depression is so vivid that she tastes salt in the back of her throat, and the mug slips from her hand.

“Carol.” He wants to take her in his arms; she can hear it as clearly as if he has said it.

“I’m fine,” she says. Her voice is husky and odd, her throat swollen. She lifts the mug and turns the faucet, rinsing the soap off the cup and setting it on the rack. Daryl shifts on his feet, moving infinitesimally away from her, his arms across his chest and his hands tucked into his armpits. She feels no satisfaction at having successfully pushed him away. Only a dull relief that she will be allowed to put her memories away in peace.

xxxx

Aka is beautiful. The word presents itself to Daryl instantly, confusingly, the way it rarely does when the person in question is a man. Not particularly tall, the leader has the lean, strong build of a runner, olive skin and dark, almond-shaped eyes set deep above sharp cheekbones. He wears spectacles, thin tortoise-shell frames that seem to enhance his good looks. His hair is thick and black, its shoulder-length waves tied in a low ponytail, and his movements, as he raises a hand in silent greeting and walks into the barn, are spare and graceful.

The group is waiting at the kitchen table, ushered there by Merle moments before in a flustered manner that made Daryl want to mock his brother. The older Dixon has never been intimidated by authority figures. But there is something different about the man who follows him into the barn—something alluring, magnetic, that goes beyond his physical beauty. There is nothing remarkable about Aka’s clothes; he wears jeans, a loose white shirt, a grey cardigan woven out of some coarse yarn that looks expensive. His shoes are brown leather boots, the sort made for boardrooms, not for mountains and woods.

He looks around the barn before coming to the table, as though taking note of how they have been living in the space. When he turns his attention to the group, his eyes slide over them one by one, settling on Carl and Sophia, at whom he smiles warmly. Daryl watches Sophia turn pink and return the smile shyly, and stares down at his lap, remembering how she feared him at first.

A chair grates across the floor and Rick gets to his feet, thrusting out a hand.

“Rick Grimes,” he says. “You must be…Aka.”

The newcomer looks at the deputy with bemusem*nt and takes another moment to survey the group before going to shake Rick’s hand.

“Chris Aka,” the man says. His voice is gentle and melodious, yet there is nothing that Daryl would consider effeminate about him. If anything, he seems to exude masculine strength, though he is neither particularly tall nor particularly bulky. He looks at the group. “Let me guess. Carl and Sophia.” He winks at them. “Lori. Hmmm. Carol, Shane. And you must be Merle’s brother. Daryl.”

Daryl grunts. Dark eyes rest on him for a second, and then Aka goes to lean against the edge of the kitchen sink, hands in his pockets, such ease in his posture that he might be a man contemplating his beloved family in his own home.

“How is everyone feeling?” Aka asks.

“Much better.” Rick hovers uncertainly, and finally sits down, which puts him at a level lower than the Thomasville leader. “Thank you for the medicine.”

Aka nods. “I believe very strongly in healing. In caring for others.” He smiles. His teeth, Daryl thinks, are the teeth of a wealthy man. “I was a doctor of integrative medicine before all this. Took my Hippocratic oath and a few more besides.” He chuckles.

“What’s integrity medicine?” Carl asks. Lori shushes him, but Aka waves a hand to silence her.

“Integrative medicine is an approach to healing that combines many different kinds of knowledge, and many different methods. Acupuncture, herbal medicine, Western medicine, homeopathy…” He straightens, his eyes alight with interest. “Our world is a divided world, a suffering world, because we do not listen to one another. Integrative medicine is about a holistic approach, about listening to the body and listening to those who understand it in ways different to our own.” He pauses, and gives a small, self-deprecating shake of his head. “But I’m getting carried away.”

He glances at Merle, who is standing glowering at the entrance to the barn. Outside, several more guards are visible. Aka himself appears unarmed.

“I’ve learnt a little bit about you from Merle,” he says to them. “And I think you might enjoy taking a look around Thomasville proper. This—” He gestures at the barn “—is merely a waystation between our community and the world at large.” He adjusts his spectacles with a slender finger. “But perhaps you have questions first?”

“Why you wanna show us around at all?” Shane asks suspiciously. “How come you ain’t sendin’ us on our way?”

Unruffled, Aka shrugs. “I see an opportunity for mutual benefit.”

“In what way?” The cop narrows his eyes.

“Thomasville is a community centred on wellbeing. On health and growth.” Aka’s expression shifts into melancholy. “We are home to a number of children, many of them orphans, and in a way they are the focus of the whole town. Its purpose.” He glances at Carl and Sophia. “They are the generation that will teach us how to survive this incarnation of the world. The generation whose DNA is right now finding ways to adapt.”

Shane frowns, and Aka leans back against the sink once more. “We are also home to a variety of medical professionals, including a women’s health specialist and a paediatrician.” His gaze moves to Lori, with an intensity that is jarring to Daryl. “You might benefit from access to their care. And I believe Thomasville could find roles for all of you.”

“We have a group of our own,” Rick says. “Waitin’ for us to return.”

Aka smiles smoothly. “There’s no harm in taking a little tour before you leave, surely? Getting a clearer idea of your options? What do you think, Lori?”

The brunette starts, spots of colour in her cheeks, a hand going to her belly.

“I’d like to look around,” she says. Shane rolls his eyes, unnoticed by either her or Rick. “I’d like to meet the doctors.”

xxxx

They split up for the tour: Daryl, Carol and Sophia go with Merle, Lori, Rick, and Carl go with Aka, and Shane heads off alone with a guard Carol remembers from the day they arrived—the man with beaded cornrows, who seemed to be in charge of his unit. As a gesture of trust and goodwill, Aka orders their weapons returned to them before the tour, with the understanding that should they harm anyone in Thomasville, they will be punished accordingly. It feels good to have her knife on her hip again, to make the small accommodation in posture required to carry it. Daryl, she can tell, misses his crossbow, his hands moving from his knife hilt to his chest as though to adjust the bow’s strap.

The group bridles, at first, at the suggestion of splitting up, but in his quiet, smiling way, Aka is utterly inflexible on the issue.

“Security protocol,” he says, and holds up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

Merle drives Carol, Daryl and Sophia into the town through a side street, a narrow alleyway guarded by two women, and parks his Jeep on the Main Street near the town square. It is late morning, drizzling steadily, and the town square is empty. The statue in its centre is a man in a suit, the bronze green with age, water trickling through the creases in his face and clothes.

“Founder,” Merle mutters when he sees them looking at it. “Somebody Thomas.”

“Figured,” says Daryl dryly, and Merle shoots him a mean look as they cross the square towards the buildings on the far side, passing a bedraggled American flag. There are faces watching them from a few of the windows, pale ovals smudged by the rain on the glass. There is an HR building—“you’ll register there, get assigned work”—a food distribution centre, a school, and a functioning gym. Through the window of the latter, they spot Shane in discussion with his guide, and Carol wonders whether splitting the group had less to do with security than it did with selling the town to each of them according to their interests. Next to the gym, on one corner of the square, is the clinic.

“Hospital,” says Merle proudly. They are standing under a dripping awning outside the gym, drops running together on the edge of the fabric before they plop onto the cobbles. “Ain’t just a clinic. Got a whole ward above the clinic, an’—an’ other stuff above that.”

Carol looks up at the building, which is four stories high. The Grimes family is doubtless in there right now, meeting the obstetrician.

“Aka said to show you the school,” Merle says. “For the kid.” He scowls at Sophia, who slips behind Daryl. The older man’s expression melts into astonishment. Daryl ignores him and turns to the girl.

“You wanna see it, Soph? The school?”

She shakes her head. Carol’s chest tightens.

“Might be a bit overwhelming,” she says quietly. “So many other kids after all this time.” She doesn’t mention how Sophia struggled at school before the world ended, painfully shy and frightened of everything, unable to invite potential friends to her house because her mother was bruised and battered so often. Merle stares at her.

“Apartments then,” he barks. “C’mon.”

They walk towards the newer blocks beyond the hospital, the rain a steady thrum now, the drops fine and soaking.

“Families live this end,” Merle says as they cross muddy gutters, sticking close to the buildings so they stay partially sheltered. “Rest of us stay the other end of town.” Carol remembers the older houses they saw from the hilltop, rundown bungalows built a generation ago. “Guess Aka considers you afamily.”

The resentment in his voice is clear, and the back of Daryl’s neck reddens, his shoulders hunching. Carol, distressed by the thought that he has been forced into a greater degree of commitment to her and Sophia than they have discussed, flails for something to distract from the awkwardness.

“The children,” she says. “The—orphans, where do they live?”

Merle doesn’t reply until they reach the first of the apartment blocks, a modern, white building with three stories, the entranceway an arch decorated with stone vines. Merle pauses at the foot of the steps and jerks his head towards the building.

“In this one. With carers.” He walks on before Carol can ask any more questions, his step brisker now that they are beyond the shelter of the shopfronts. At the second block, he turns and climbs the steps to the entrance, shoving a heavy swing door open. The clatter of the frame hitting plaster echoes in the tiled lobby as the group follows him in. The wall opposite the entrance houses rows of wooden postboxes, brass apartment numbers on them, and there is an elevator beside the stairs. A yellowing “Out of Order” notice is tacked crookedly on the doors. Merle glances at it as he leads them to the staircase.

“We got generators for essentials in some buildings, includin’ this one for now. Solar for the hospital. We make do.” He points upwards. “Supposed to be installin’ panels on this buildin’ any day now. A team jus’ brought ‘em in a couple days ago.” There is a note of pride in his voice, and Carol notices Daryl peer at him in surprise.

They turn down a hallway on the third floor. There are still two floors above them—this is the tallest of the three blocks. Someone is cooking in one of the apartments, and the sound of classical music drifts from another. It is, for a moment, like stepping into another time altogether, a time before the turn.

Were they to stay, they would be assigned apartment 309, which is at the end of the hallway. Merle unlocks the dark wooden door with a key, and goes inside, crossing the room to yank open the curtains and allow the grey light from outside into the main living area. Carol, Daryl and Sophia follow him in, stopping just across the threshold.

The kitchen is off the entrance hall, a small, compact space with a modest refrigerator and a gas stove. Past the kitchen, the hallway opens into a living room, furnished with two couches and an armchair, the personalities of the previous occupants evident in the vivid upholstery, the art on the walls: reproductions of Warhol and some similar artist, cartoonish and colourful. Merle grimaces in apparent distaste.

“What happened to the people who lived here before?” Carol asks. He shrugs.

“Guess they left when the dead started walkin’. Dunno.” He sniffs, and wipes rainwater off his face with his forearm. His forehead shines. “Some of the folks here used to farm for the nut people, but Aka an’ the others, they came from Atlanta. Emory. Dunno how they ended up here.” He gestures impatiently at the doors off the living room. “Well, look around. See whatcha think.”

There is a moment of unexpected levity as they obey, trooping from the living room into the first of two bedrooms like prospective buyers in a show-house. Merle flops onto a couch and leaves them to it, and once they are inside the bedroom Carol turns to Daryl and starts to laugh, muffling it with a hand over her mouth. Sophia stares at her, puzzled and a little alarmed, and Daryl’s face breaks into a shy grin.

“I’m sorry,” Carol says through her laughter. “I’m fine, sweetheart, I promise.” Sophia relaxes, and Carol looks at Daryl again. “I didn’t think we’d be house hunting so soon.”

He flushes, lowering his eyes, and all her amusem*nt vanishes. Sophia wanders over to the double bed, fingering the warm comforter, and then goes to investigate the tiny bathroom attached to the room. Once she is out of earshot, Carol turns back to Daryl. His hands are in his pockets, his demeanour uncomfortable, his eyes on the worn rug under their feet.

“You didn’t ask for this,” she says softly, quickly. “Everything’s still so, uh, new between us, and you didn’t—if we stay, you don’t have to live with us. Act like we’re a…a family.” The word is hard to say. Daryl studies her, his expression wary, and she rambles on. “Merle’s your brother,he’syour family, you’re not responsible for—for me or Sophia.”

The air between them, when she finally shuts up, is taut as a bowstring. Daryl chews his lower lip, worrying a piece of dry skin with his teeth until she is afraid it will bleed.

“You want me to stay with Merle?” he says finally. He seems braced as though for a blow, stiff and alert.

“I—want you to have a choice.” Carol’s voice scrapes and cracks, and she clears her throat loudly. A faucet squeaks in the bathroom as Sophia turns it on and off.

“You think I might choose to be away from you?” The words are gravelly, edged with what might be anger. His eyes flick to the bathroom behind her. “From her?”

“I don’t know,” Carol whispers, crossing her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “You have Merle back, Daryl. That’s—important.”

“Can I look at the other room, Mama?” Sophia is at her side suddenly, her face brighter than it has been since they left the barn this morning. “My room?”

Carol nods quickly, not bothering to issue the caveat that they might not stay here, and Sophia leaves the bedroom, going into the one next door. The walls are thick; her footsteps fade into silence. In the living room, Merle gives a phlegmy snort, and when Carol glances at him through the doorway, he is watching her appraisingly with beady blue eyes. She moves away from the threshold, towards the window, where she is out of sight of the older Dixon. After a moment, Daryl follows her.

The building opposite the apartment block is a house with a shabby grandeur which seems unusual for what she has seen of Thomasville, a walled-in garden beside it. Past the garden is another apartment block, and then the buildings are commercial right to the end of Main Street. A gas station is bordered by a warehouse, opposite it an office block, and then—just visible through their window—there is another barricade of shipping containers marking the end of the town. Guards are huddled on top of them under two large beach umbrellas.

Daryl does not touch her, but leans one shoulder against the wall beside the window, rubbing the toe of his boot on the floorboards where the rug ends. The skirting is lined with dirt, and the windowsill is dusty, a dead fly curled near the latch.

“What do you want?” His voice startles her from her reverie, and she looks up from the rain-streaked panes, the papery scraps of the fly’s wings.What do you want from me? She remembers his frustration as he asked her that outside the strip mall.What do you want from me?

“What do you mean?” she says now. His face hardens.

“You want me to stay with you or not? Live with you.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and she looks away. Cold clings to the glass of the window, brushing her knuckles as she rests her fingertips on the edge of the sill.

“I want you to have a choice,” she repeats. He huffs out a sigh, pushing himself off the wall and moving closer to her, the warmth of his nearness a counterweight to the chill from outside.

“You’ve got one too,” he says. “How ‘bout you tell me whatyouwant for yourself.”

The bite in his voice is what does it, the suggestion of anger where perhaps there is only irritation. It hardly matters to her nervous system, to her reflexes, because annoyance was just as likely as outright fury to make Ed hit her. And so she cringes from Daryl, flinching as she steps away from him, her heart fluttering in her throat, her fright warring with a newer, less familiar instinct to reach for him for comfort.

His face sags with dismay. She takes a short, gasping breath, and then a slower one, waits out the aching tension in her muscles, the thudding in her ears.

“I ain’t mad,” he whispers. “Carol, I—”

“I know.” She lifts a hand to her throat, her fingers unsteady. “It’s not you, it’s—memories.” He frowns, his eyes dark with misery. “Ed never asked me what I wanted, and if he did, it was a…a trick. A game.” Her shoulders slump. “I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

His expression doesn’t change, his face forlorn, his mouth pulling down, and she lets a different urge take over. His cheeks are warm beneath her palms, his breath a nervous puff, but as she lifts her face and coaxes him into a kiss, his hands grasp her waist so tightly that it hurts. His mouth is tentative over hers, and she keeps her lips light, brushing them across his and then peppering smaller kisses in the corners of his mouth. His hands ease their hold after a few seconds, his eyes closing. She pulls away when she senses a surge of need in him, his lips beginning to part against hers as he tugs her closer.

“Wanna stay with you,” he breathes, his brow resting against hers, his eyes still shut. “Wanna bewithyou. Dunno why you even need to ask.”

Her eyes prick with tears, and she shifts her head to his shoulder, hugging him. His co*ck is hard against her belly, his arms firm across her back.

“I want that too,” she whispers. “I want that too.”

Chapter 36

Chapter Text

It is inevitable that they decide to stay—Carol knows it will be their choice as soon as she walks out of apartment 309 and sees Lori’s face, while the Grimes family waits to be shown their living space. The brunette is flushed and smiling, with a confidence Carol hasn’t seen once during her pregnancy. As she passes Lori in the corridor, Merle and Daryl ahead of her, the pregnant woman grabs her arm.

“The obstetrician did a scan. An ultrasound.” Her voice shakes, but it is with joy this time. “I saw my baby, Carol.”

The group’s conversation after the tour, when they return to the holding pen, is brief. No one has reservations significant enough to outweigh the fact of proper medical care—not just for Lori and her baby, but for all of them. Hershel’s death, Daryl and Carl’s illnesses, have shaken them, and Merle’s presence, his apparent gainful employment, are further evidence that Thomasville is a community worth joining.

They return to the bunker the same afternoon, Rick driving the Chevy, one of Aka’s men behind him in a minivan. Dale is on watch and lets out a cry of relief when he sees them, a sentiment echoed by the others who stayed behind.

“Didn’ know how long to wait ‘fore we came after you,” T-Dog says, and Andrea glares at him in silence. There has, it seems, been ongoing and vigorous debate about whether to mount a rescue effort. They do not need much convincing to agree to a move. Maggie, in particular, seems to brighten at the idea of a normal apartment, a place that might feel like home for her and Glenn now that she has lost the rest of her family. They buried Hershel in the woods, she tells Carol, a short distance from the bunker, and marked the spot with a small cairn.

The bunker is alive with chatter as they pack. When her bag and Sophia’s are ready, Carol goes down to the kitchen. Aka’s man is there, making lists on a page which also contains a sketch of the bunker’s layout. He nods at Carol, but doesn’t bother explaining his activities, and she wonders whether Thomasville will co-opt this place once the group moves.

She is not sorry to leave it behind, though the others linger wistfully as Daryl and Shane carry bags and some of the food stores up to the cars. It is luxurious and secure, purpose-built for the end of the world, but she will be grateful for a view of the sky through her bedroom window, the privacy the apartment will afford them. And she is thankful that Sophia will be among children her own age again. Perhaps without Ed around, the girl will adjust more easily to school and friendships.

The weather helps hasten their departure once the cars are loaded: pelting rain and wind, a cold that cuts through Carol’s jacket and shirt. Daryl drives the Chevy back to Thomasville behind the minivan, the RV and other vehicles in a convoy with them. Sophia chatters about how she will miss the pool table at the bunker, how she is going to organise her room at the apartment, and from time to time, Carol glances over her head at Daryl. He does not look entirely well yet, his skin still pasty, dark bags under his eyes, but his cough is almost gone. She wants to be alone with him, needs it so that she can touch him and listen to him breathe and know that he is okay.

It is another two hours before she gets that opportunity, hours during which they move their belongings into the apartment and get instructions about registering officially the following day. Merle, who hands over the keys, seems keen to loiter, staring at her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention. But a radio on his belt crackles just as she puts the kettle on the gas stove, and he is called away. Sophia—her clothes unpacked, her lucky cat on the nightstand, her reluctance to be around Merle obvious—is in Carl’s apartment, which is bigger, and has a view over the farmland surrounding the town.

Merle grunts a farewell to Carol as he lets himself out, slamming the front door behind him. She turns off the stove, relieved that he is gone, and goes to find Daryl. He is in their bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed gazing out of the rain-spattered window, elbows on his thighs and his hands hanging loosely between his knees.

“You should rest,” she tells him quietly from the doorway. He does not take his eyes off the sky. “Lie down for a bit.”

He looks down at his hands. “Will you—will you lie with me?”

There is no teasing in his voice, no flirtation, as there might be from another man—just longing. They have not slept side by side since moving Hershel to the RV. Carol goes to the bed and sits down beside him. They are both in short sleeves, warmed by unpacking and organising the apartment, and when the skin of her arm brushes his, he shivers.

“I should finish sorting out the kitchen,” she says. “And collect some food.”

He nods silently, but reaches across and takes her hand in his, drawing it into his lap. With a fingertip, he follows the length of each of her fingers from knuckle to tip, slowly and thoughtfully, resting the pad of his finger on her nails one by one. She blushes, conscious of her work-worn skin, the freckles on the back of her hand. He pauses at her little finger, which is slightly crooked, his fingertip moving back and forth across the odd angle in the bone. Her wrist rests in the palm of his other hand.

“How many times?” he asks, still stroking her little finger. She looks out at the bleak afternoon, listens to the rain rattling against the windowpanes.

“Three,” she says at last. “There was a weakness in it after the first time he broke it, and he—remembered that.”

Daryl lifts her hand to his face, holding it as delicately as a moth, and closes his eyes, kissing her knuckles one by one. When he reaches her little finger, he kisses the tip, too, and suddenly it is on his tongue, his lips closing softly around the base, his mouth sucking gently. She turns and watches his face, mesmerised by the sweep of his eyelashes against his skin, the way his cheeks hollow out with each suckle, the way she can feel the pull of his mouth somewhere inside her. His tongue curls around the finger, hot and eager and strangely comforting, his hand closed around her wrist. There is an unfamiliar ache in her belly. She thinks of the night he held her fingers in his mouth as she fell asleep, the warm rhythm of his lips.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispers. His eyes snap open, alight with hunger, and her heart sinks. “Being close to you, I mean.” She tries to smile, to intercept the disappointment already clouding his expression as he draws her hand away from his mouth. “Being alone with you.”

“Me too.” He holds her hand in his lap again, his eyes lowered, keeping it away from the bulge in his pants. Her wet finger is cold. She stands up, walking to the other side of the bed, undoing her jeans before she can change her mind. She hesitates when he glances at her, his face red, and he looks away so she can slide her pants off and get under the comforter in just her underwear and T-shirt. The linen is cool and starchy, and for a second her teeth chatter.

Daryl does not take off his jeans. He undoes them before joining her under the covers, the same angry reluctance in his demeanour that he expressed the last time they had sex. She starts to turn over onto her stomach, but he stops her, shifting himself over her, her legs spreading automatically to make space for him. She is inexplicably breathless once he is above her, his biceps framing her face, his eyes burning blue as he studies her. His co*ck rests heavily against her thigh through the cotton of his boxers, his hips bracketing hers.

She reaches down and pulls the crotch of her panties to the side before freeing his erection from his boxers. His shaft twitches in her grasp, and his eyes close as she strokes the length of it, smoothing her thumb over the head. It fills her hand, slippery and so hot, and she lets go and rubs some of the precum on her palm between her legs.

He replaces her hand with his own when she tries to guide him inside herself. Balancing on one elbow, he reaches between them, gently moving her hand out the way, and holds his co*ck just below the head, sliding it up and down her labia, wetting them, parting them, coaxing more precum from the tip. He keeps his eyes on hers until she can hear her rapid breathing above the sound of the rain, until her chest is rising and falling and her nipples are stiff, and then he shifts and instead of his co*ck at her entrance she feels his fingertip.

She moans in fright, her fingers digging into his arms. He does not move, his face dark with sadness, his finger resting lightly where her body opens. He does not push it into her or scrape at her insides. Instead, he strokes light as a feather around the fluttering skin of her opening, round and round as she squeezes her eyes shut and clamps her thighs against his hips.Ssshhh. He speaks to her like he might to a frightened animal, the tone of his voice reaching some part of her that barely comprehends the words themselves.Ain’t gonna hurtya.

She tries to believe him as his fingertip moves away, across the fragile folds between her labia, skimming over her cl*t and down again to her entrance. He circles the opening again, and she stiffens, her walls contracting reflexively. “It feel bad?” he asks anxiously.

She shakes her head, her eyes still shut, unable to ease her grip on his arms. It doesn’t feel bad. His touch is tentative and curious, and there is a faint warmth in its wake, spreading outwards from his finger. She can feel the fine shift of the muscles in the arm between her legs as he caresses her, can feel all the power he isn’t using to make her do whatever he likes. Fear wars with a sleepy heat that licks at her limbs, and when he moves his hand away, she is both relieved and disappointed, so confused by her own response that her breath catches in her chest.

The thick push of his co*ck is familiar, the stretch of it working her open. But where he has been caressing her, the muscle burning now as it widens for him, there is a ripple of something else too, which sends a quiver through her. She opens her eyes. Daryl is gazing down at her as he pushes deeper, his gaze the dark blue of the deep sea, his mouth slack as he groans, burying himself in her. Her walls clench, and he inhales sharply, his biceps flexing beside her face, his expression almost pained.

“puss* feels so f*ckin’ good,” he breathes.

They pause there, looking at each other, her face flushed with the ache of taking him, her heart thumping in her ears. He bends and kisses her cheek, his scruff grazing her skin, the gesture shy and sweet. She tilts her hips, lifting her knees to his waist, and his co*ck inches further, bumping her limit, her ankles crossing at the small of his back as she gasps.

“Carol.” His voice is strangled, his head dropping to the pillow beside hers. She weaves her fingers into his hair and waits, blinking up at the ceiling, her body rippling around his shaft as her muscles strain to accommodate it.

He lifts his head as he starts to thrust, fixing his eyes on hers, his gaze so intense that she cannot tolerate it—not while he is inside her. She closes her eyes beneath his gaze and listens to the thud of his body against hers, feels her walls cling to him, her pelvis throbbing each time she opens around his shaft. There is a chafing soreness in each drag of his length out of her body, each inward plunge, his movements eased only by precum. When his pace gets quicker, sharper, she arches her back, bracing herself out of habit for a pain, a violence, that do not arrive. His lips settle on her throat as he comes, his co*ck jerking as he fills her, his mouth sucking at her skin until she whimpers. He mumbles something into her neck, his hips still rocking against hers, cum leaking around the base of his co*ck and trickling down to her ass.

He reaches between them again as he withdraws from her, his fingers sliding through his release, and she watches his face, reminding herself that he is not Ed. He looks dazed, his co*ck slippery and still hard as he eases it free of her body. His fingertip moves in a lazy, slick circle, following the gape of her entrance, and then it slips lower, chasing the cum between her ass cheeks.

She might kick him in her fear; she doesn’t know, because for a moment the world is bright white and roaring, and then she is crouched against the headboard, clutching the comforter, her knees pulled to her chest as Daryl says her name in alarm. His face is stricken, the glistening fingers of one hand extended towards her.

“Sorry,” she gasps. She is sticky with his release, freezing suddenly. She hears the flick of a lighter, feels Ed’s hand on the small of her back, and tears spring to her eyes. Daryl shakes his head, his hand dropping.

“Don’ cry. sh*t. sh*t. My fault.” His hand falls. “My f*ckin’ fault, I shouldna tried to—”

“Doesn’t matter.” She tries to steady her breathing. “Doesn’t matter. Don’t—” His eyes gleam, his mouth twisting. “Daryl. Daryl. Come here.”

It takes an immense effort to open her arms, to release the edge of the comforter and accept the weight of him against her chest as he reaches for her. She is still half in the nightmare, a pillow between her teeth as she stifles a scream, Ed moaning in pleasure. Daryl clings to her for only a second, her knees trapped between them, and then he moves away, lifting his hands from her slowly, searching her face with a desolate expression.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. She shrugs, renewing her hold on the comforter with white knuckles, and he gets up and goes into the bathroom, the door snicking shut behind him.

xxxx

He leaves the apartment early in the evening, after Sophia has returned, after he and Carol have taken quick, icy showers in the bathroom. The generator runs at certain hours of the day, and hot water is available then; the rest of the time, the water is cold and the lights don’t work. Carol has been distant in the wake of their time together, jittery and unreachable, so busy that she has barely been still for a second.

The rain has not let up all day. Daryl wears an old oilskin poncho over his sweater, and ducks his head to keep the drops off his face as he walks. There are other people around, walking home from work, he supposes, but their heads are bent, their faces hidden by high collars and hoods, and no one stops to ask who he is.

Merle clocks off day shift around 5, and told Daryl to find him at his accommodation, a room in a hostel that is simply called A Block. It isn’t hard to find once Daryl has crossed the town square, because three identical long, low buildings stand side-by-side, concrete paths running between them, the sidewalk melting into a narrow gravel yard in front of them. A letter is painted above the door of each one:A,B,C. Daryl’s feet crunch on the stones, dirty rainwater welling from the mud at the edges of his boots as he sets them down. From one of the blocks comes the sound of men laughing, a voice shouting in mock objection to whatever amuses the others.

Block A smells of soup and feet, and the cheap, dingy brown rug along the hallway is worn down to white, plasticky netting in places. At the very end of the hallway is a living room, or a dining hall—people come and go, and the sound of dishes clattering is audible among the thump of feet. Daryl grunts at the men who greet him as they pass, ignoring the ones who do a double take at the new face. Merle’s room, A14, is halfway down the hall, and the door is standing open. Daryl stops on the threshold.

Merle has his back to the hallway. He is taking a beer out of a bar fridge, which stands next to a single bed. He kicks the fridge door closed as he straightens up, popping the cap off the bottle against the edge of a plain wooden table scattered with belongings—a knife in a sheath, a two-way radio, a pack of Marlboro Reds, a dog-eared sheaf of papers, some kind of ID card on a lanyard. And his metal prosthesis, Daryl realises with shock, the loosened straps trailing on the wood.

Merle turns. Daryl’s gaze goes straight to his right arm, the forearm ending above the wrist in an uneven stump, one edge gnarled, the skin all around it red and angry looking.

“Itches like hell.” The older man’s voice is hard and defensive. Daryl’s eyes flick to his face, and Merle sneers, thrusting the stump out. “Come inside an’ take a good look, li’l brother.”

Daryl shuffles into the room, flushed with shame, his eyes lowered. A dirty pair of boots lies in the middle of the floor, and near the bed an ancient-looking pair of slippers. Merle drinks loudly from the beer and belches before he speaks again.

“Some nights, feels like I’m cuttin’ it off all over again.” His voice is quieter. Daryl glances at him and is surprised by the blank expression on his face. Merle presses the side of the glass bottle to the inflamed skin on his arm. “Wake up thinkin’ it’s there, I can save it, but—it ain’t.”

He stares at Daryl, unseeing, and then blinks and scowls, turning to open the fridge again.

“Here.” He tosses a beer to the younger man, who catches it just in time. The bottle is chilled but not ice cold. Daryl, who doesn’t want a beer, becomes aware of a faint clanking sound coming from the back of the tiny fridge. Merle watches him pop the cap with the blade of his knife, and doesn’t look away until Daryl has taken a long drink from the bottle.

Grunting in what might be approval, Merle wanders over to the bed and flops onto it, his back against the headboard. The wall against which the bed is pushed has posters on it—centrefolds, busty women draped over motorbikes, the hood of a white Cadillac. Their nipples are pink and perfectly round, and they wear G-strings, their legs long and uniform brown. They look alien to Daryl somehow, made-up creatures from a made-up world.

“Ronnie in 11’s got more magazines,” Merle says, smirking. “He knows I sent you, he might let you take a look.”

Daryl snorts, looking away from the posters, the tips of his ears burning. The only other place to sit is a rickety wooden chair which stands at the table. He pulls it out and sits down gingerly, angling it to face the bed. Merle scratches his balls lazily, swallowing more beer, wiping his foreshortened arm across his mouth as he lowers the bottle.

“Now tell your big bro,” he drawls. “How in the hell you ended up playin’ daddy to that runt of a kid?” He sniffs. “Mind you, her momma mus’ know some tricks after her last marriage.”

For a second, Daryl sees Carol kneeling in front of Ed, trying to brace her dislocated shoulder as he thrusts into her mouth.

“Ain’t like that.” The anger in the words startles him as much as it does Merle, his fingers tingling, his spine stiff as he watches his brother’s eyes widen. He tries to rein in the rush of fury. “Carol ain’t like that. Watch your goddamn mouth.”

Merle narrows his eyes. “She gotta puss*, don’t she? An’ arealfine ass.” He smirks at the thought of it and waggles his beer bottle at Daryl as he continues. “Women, they like to pretend they’re special. End of the day, though, they’re all the same.”

“Carolisspecial.” The words fall lamely from Daryl’s lips, his face colouring even before Merle starts to laugh. There is no language shared between them in which he can explain Carol to his brother; no way to talk about the softness of her, the safety, the strength. Daryl thinks of her in the jewellery store, decked in silver and gold, all the light in the room drawn to her and her eyes the colour of platinum. He takes a long sip of his beer. There is a faint mark on his stomach where she kicked him earlier, in a moment of blind terror. He isn’t even sure she knows she did, her heel striking his abdomen as his finger crept towards the seam of her buttocks.

“You’re a miserable f*ck, aintcha,” Merle remarks. “Marital bliss not what it’s cracked up to be?”

“Ain’t married.” He says it tiredly, the remark unnecessary, simply a means for Merle to toy with him some more. Daryl tries to pre-empt the next comment. “What ‘bout you?”

“What ‘bout me?” Merle retorts, an ugly expression on his face. His stump twitches against his thigh. “You askin’ if I’ve found a woman who likes this kinda thing?” He lifts his arm.

“That ain’t what I—”

“Shut up.” Merle tips the last of the beer down his throat. His eyes glitter with an anger that awakens a childhood fear in Daryl, a memory of being wrestled to the ground and held there, dirt in his mouth and one arm twisted behind his back. He scrambles for something to defuse his brother’s rage.

“The General, huh?” He peers into the mouth of his beer bottle, surprised to realise the drink is finished.

“Aka picked it,” Merle says shortly. “Heard I was in the army.”

Daryl looks up at the older man, about to remind him that he was dishonourably discharged, but a warning flashes in Merle’s eyes and Daryl clamps his mouth shut. He can’t remember exactly why he came here, what he was hoping for—a catch-up? Reminiscences of childhood? Neither of the men is keen, it seems, to go over the last few months in detail, and their childhoods, where they overlapped, are not fodder for casual conversation.

“Gimme another one.” Merle tosses his empty bottle into a metal wastepaper basket and gestures towards the fridge. “An’ get yourself one. Next time you bring ‘em.”

Daryl glances towards the open door.

“Aah, piss off then,” Merle says disgustedly. “Ain’t interested in long-lost Merle now you gotta new family, that it? Now you got puss* waitin’ for you?”

Daryl stands and goes to the fridge.

“Bullsh*t,” he mutters. “Jus’ wonderin’ whether Shane’s in this block. T-Dog, Dale? They also in here?”

“Block C,” Merle replies, reaching for the beer Daryl hands him. “This one’s been full for months, an’ Block B is single women.” He wets his lips, and Daryl sits down again. Through the high, small bedroom window, the sky is darkening from grey to charcoal. Carol was cooking when Daryl left, exclaiming over the fresh vegetables she’d been given at the food distribution centre, peeling and slicing them for stew. He wants to go home and spend an evening with her and Sophia, make sure the girl is comfortable with their living arrangement. Make sure Carol has forgiven him.

“You ain’t gotta start work till next week,” Merle says. He is already halfway through his second beer, sunk against the pillow behind him. “But I told ‘em to put you down to train with me.” He grins, baring yellowed teeth, genuine joy in his expression. “The Dixons back together again. Somethin’, ain’t it?”

Daryl nods, returns the smile with effort. The lid of his beer clinks onto the table as he pops it off against the edge, the liquid cool and sour on his tongue. He knows how to do this, how to be the Daryl Merle loves most—a quiet audience to the older man’s commentary, admirer of his wit and cunning, keeper of his wisdom. But settling into that role now feels like treachery, a betrayal of the man he has become these past months.Dumbass, he thinks, pushing the thought away.You too good for your own brother now?Defiantly, he downs the rest of his beer, tossing the bottle into the trash and flicking the cap at Merle, hitting his chest.

“You allowed to smoke in here?” he asks, gesturing at the cigarettes on the table. His brother smiles slowly, nodding, and Daryl reaches for the box.

Chapter 37

Chapter Text

She dreams of Ed, and wakes to the stink of alcohol and tobacco, roused by the sixth sense that warns her when her husband comes home drunk and mean. It is an instinct practically useless, only ever allowing her a few moments of dread before the inevitable. She is on the couch, her head bent at an uncomfortable angle while she slept, her knees pulled to her chest in the chill of the living room. When she opens her eyes, her husband is sitting on the couch opposite hers, a silhouette against the faint illumination of a light on somewhere in the house.

“Ed.” Her voice is husky, her eyes gritty with sleep, but her nervous system is wide awake, her skin prickling, her mouth dry with fear. Her dream has conjured him, likely drunk, almost certainly cruel. She shrinks into the corner of the couch as he leans forward.

“Might as well be.”

Daryl. The room takes on a different shape in the darkness around her—not her old living room back in Atlanta, but the apartment in Thomasville. Somewhere in the building, a generator clanks, heating water for the morning while they sleep. Her breath hitches as she inhales, her eyes damp with relief as she tries to make out Daryl’s face. He didn’t come home last night, their first night in the apartment. She ate a late dinner with Sophia and put the child to bed, telling her Daryl was spending time with his brother when Sophia asked where he was. Carol sat down here to wait for him hours ago, thinking he would be back any minute.

His eyes gleam grey, his face angular and unreadable in the dim light, and suddenly she realises what he said.

“What—what do you mean?” she asks, her relief at his return fading slowly into unease. He sits, motionless, and doesn’t reply. “Are you okay?”

He laughs, and she knows as soon as the sound leaves his mouth that he is on the verge of tears. The realisation disorients her all over again. Hanging his head, he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Shouldn’t be like the others, you know?” He is talking to the floor, his voice choked and uneven. “Should be different.” He looks up, and though she can barely make him out, she can now see his slumped shoulders, the misery in his empty, upturned hands. “Ain’t ever gonna be different though, ‘cause you think I’m the same as him.”

She pulls herself to the edge of the couch, tucking her hands under her thighs to warm them, fighting the remnants of her dream for clarity of thought. It feels like she has come late to a conversation begun hours, days, maybe even weeks ago. She takes a deep breath.

“I don’t think you’re the same as him.” She adopts, automatically, a tone intended to deflect violence. Daryl sits back again and laughs bitterly.

“Listen to yourself.” He shrugs. “f*ckin’ listen to the voice you’re usin’ to talk to me.”

He is not drunk, she realises as he spits the words out. He has been drinking, but he is not drunk. He is sober and angry, and hurt more than she thought herself capable of hurting him.

“I can’t help it,” she whispers.

“Like you can’t help thinkin’ I’m gonna hurtya? f*ck with you like he did?” The words are raw. “What’d I ever do to make you think that of me?”

Carol draws back. Guilt sits on her tongue like a stone, worn smooth from years of being held in her mouth, its cold surface scraping her palate and bumping her teeth. An apology waiting to be made, a plea for forgiveness. But in her belly, buried deep, is something weightier, pressing against her ribs until she can feel them separate: a rage of her own. She exhales slowly, and her breath is the icy breath of rivers and rocks.

“It’s not about you,” she says, her voice hard. “I was married to him for years and years, Daryl. I had a child with him.” Her eyes sting. “I’m trying to leave him behind. But it—it takes time.”

“An’ in the meantime I gotta feel like I’m forcin’ you every time I touch you?” The savagery in his voice, the ugliness of his words, reawaken her fear, and she clasps her arms across her chest, trying to keep herself together.

“What do you want from me?” she asks quietly, and she is so unprepared for the movement when he gets to his feet that she cringes, ducking her head. He curses,Jesus Christ, and walks to the wall, flipping the light switch. In the flood of brightness, she cannot see for a second, her eyes watering, and then she notices the bruise on his face, the smear of blood under his nose.

“Want you to stop hidin’ from me,” he rasps. “Want you to trust me. Wanna be able tof*ckyou different to how I used to f*ck…strangers.” He flushes, his eyes bright, feverish with frustration. “Wanna touch you where he did and make youforget.”

She stands up, unable to sit cowering on the couch while he stares at her. Her weak shoulder throbs, her hand trailing along the arm of the chair as her body braces for impact. She despises how ingrained her responses are, how successfully Ed still controls her physical impulses. But her sides ache, the stone shifting, and she stops being afraid.

“I’ll never forget.” Her voice is flat. She wants to go to Daryl, clean the blood from his face, hold him and ask him what happened. But she knows the answer (Merle happened) and she clings to her newfound courage as though to a beloved child, kept from her for years and years. “Have you forgotten what your father did to you?”

She tries not care about the way Daryl falters at her words, his eyes sliding to the floor, his throat working.

“Nah,” he says hoarsely. “But I ain’t gonna hide it from you.” He looks up, his expression anguished. “You wanna—talk about it, see it, I ain’t gonna say no. ‘Cause—” He doesn’t finish the sentence, shaking his head, plunging his hands into his pockets. Her rage grows unwieldy, insistent, a boulder blocking the cave where her worst memories reside.

“You want me totalkabout what he did to me?” she asks disbelievingly. “You haven’t seen enough?” Her face is wet. “You think bringing it all up again will make me want you?”

He recoils as though she has struck him, taking a step backwards, his hands sliding from his pockets and hovering at his sides for a moment as though he is caught between two conflicting movements. Carol thinks of his fingers on her back, searching their way between scar tissue and skin, caressing every inch with equal care, and her fury dissolves, leaving her hollow.

“Where—where is this coming from?” she asks unsteadily. “Merle?” She makes herself look at the mark on Daryl’s face, the blood, his eyes burning above them. “Did he do that?”

“‘S comin’ from here.” His voice is rough, hopeless, the hand he lays on his chest trembling. His knuckles are grazed. Her heart constricts. “Ain’t got—sh*t to do with Merle.”

He does not come to her when she starts to cry. She covers her face as it crumples, grits her teeth so all the sound she makes is a whimper, pushes down the sobs that crowd into the back of her mouth. From his place beside the light-switch, he speaks without acknowledging her grief.

“I wanna know what scares you.” His voice is dull now, as though what he says hardly matters. “Wanna know what you’re afraid of when I touch you one way or another.” He pauses. She swallows a mouthful of tears, her chest heaving. “It ain’t about f*ckin’, Carol. Ain’t ever just been about that.” His voice catches, and he clears his throat quietly. “‘S about—knowin’ you.Learnin’you. Can’t do that if you won’t let me.”

She lifts her head. He is a vague shape, and her voice, when she speaks, is ragged and barely recognisable to her.

“If I—let you,” she says, her shoulders jerking as she gulps for air. “You won’t—want me—anymore.”

His face, white and stricken, shifts into an expression so full of sorrow that she presses a fist to her mouth to seal it, to stop herself from howling at her inability to accept what he wants so badly to give her. For a second, she is drowning, breathless.

“I’m always gonna want you,” he whispers. She shakes her head.

“Now—here—there are people who can—be more than me. Give you—more than—I can.” She sounds crazed, hysterical. Daryl watches her silently. “Women.” A wound opens in her chest, slices straight down to her belly. “You’re right. You—deserve more.”

“‘S not what I meant.” He squares his jaw, tipping his head back and blinking rapidly. When he lowers it, his eyes are rimmed with pink. “Don’t want no one but you. Not now, not ever.”

They stare at each other. She is gasping, hiccuping, shaking with the force of her weeping. He takes a step towards her, and she lifts her hands to stop him.

“You try so hard to hide all the—all the hurtin’ parts of yourself,” he says. “Like you gotta be ashamed or somethin’. Like I’m gonna run away soon as you’re honest with me for one goddamn second.” He swipes his forearm across his face, smearing the blood under his nose. His voice cracks. “But I don’t jus’ want the—the perfect bits of you. Want you exactly as you are.Allof you.” He stops, and his next words are quiet, fervent, the truth of them sliding under her skin and into her blood. “’Cause I love you.”

xxxx

She does not answer him. He cannot remember ever seeing her so distraught, her face blotched with tears, her eyes bloodshot, grief locking her body into a stiff, sharp-edged posture. For all the ways she has hurt him during this argument, none of them matches her agony as she admitted to him what she fears, or the sob she gives as he tells her he loves her. He goes to her because she looks like she might fall, rocking forward as she wraps her arms around her middle, and his relief when he catches her, holds her, is so great that his eyes fill with tears. She does not fight his embrace, but lets him draw her against his chest, one hand in her hair as he hugs her.

“I love you.” He says it again so she cannot mistake it. “Ain’t nothin’ you could show me or tell me would change that.”

Blindly, she lifts her hands and clutches handfuls of his shirt. She is crying silently, her tears wetting his neck, so overwrought that he knows she could not speak even if she wanted to. It does not matter. He has not spoken because he needs a reply. He knows she might still leave him, knows—because she has told him—that she doesn’t want to be with him the way he wants to be with her, not really. But still there is a peace in having admitted how he feels.

They stand for a long time in the living room, her fingers kneading his chest. He can feel the bones in her back beneath his arm, narrow as a child’s, her hair warm and soft between his fingers. When at last she speaks, her throat sounds sore, her voice the texture of sandpaper.

“I’m—sorry.”

“Come,” he murmurs, and she sags against him and does not resist when he bends and picks her up in his arms. There are fresh tears on her cheeks as she turns her face into his chest. She does not release her hold on his shirt as he carries her into their bedroom, flicking the living room light off on his way. The bathroom light is on, the door ajar, the bed not slept in. He halts at the bedside and speaks with his lips against the crown of her head.

“I’m sorry I didn’ come home sooner. Sorry I wasn’ with you and Soph for the first night.”

She doesn’t answer. He lowers her to the mattress, pulling the comforter back awkwardly and then tucking it over her. Her eyes are open, staring towards the bedroom window, but when he steps back from the bed, she turns and reaches for him, her chin wobbling, and he takes her hand, crouching next to her.

“Gonna wash my face,” he says softly, and brushes back a curl that is stuck to her cheek, crusted with salt. “You want me to come lie with you after? Or I can sleep on the couch?”

Her eyes shimmer. “Come lie with me,” she whispers. He nods, his throat aching with relief, and gets up. In the bathroom, he splashes his face, dabs some toilet paper at the blood under his nose. He is bone weary, his knuckles sore from fighting with Merle over the rum Daryl refused to drink.puss* whipped. His brother’s voice has the iron scent of blood.Forgotten how to be a real man.

The evening unravelled quickly when Merle reached his fourth beer. Daryl stopped at three, the buzz making him uncomfortable, his empty stomach churning as he smoked and coughed, his lungs still lined with phlegm from the virus. His older brother brought out the liquor once the beer was finished, drank straight from the bottle and then offered it to Daryl, and when he refused, Merle got mad. He has always known Daryl’s weak spots, found them with an unerring instinct, and this time he chose Carol, saying increasingly filthy things about her until Daryl lost his temper, fought Merle, and left.

And yet, as he walked home from Block A, Daryl found himself brooding over Merle’s remarks in a way that made him angry with Carol instead of his brother. Merle asked about her tit*, her ass, talked about her sucking his dick and riding him, and underneath Daryl’s disgust was a kernel of resentment. He doesn’t know what her tit* are like. He hasn’t tasted her puss*. She doesn’t writhe or scream with pleasure when he f*cks her, doesn’t feel any kind of pleasure at all. And with any other women, he wouldn’t give a sh*t—he never has, not for those nameless bodies in dark corners and the cab of Merle’s truck. But Carol…Carol is in his blood like a disease, and there is no part of her he doesn’t want—doesn’t need—to know. It is about sex, but it is not only about sex. What she hides from him is much, much more than a body.

In the bathroom, he takes up a towel and scrubs his face dry.You think bringing it all up again will make me want you?He thinks of the terror on her face as she kicked him, his finger slipping over her skin, and he grips the edges of the basin for a moment, fighting off despair. He has screwed up, pushed and demanded and pressured her when she has been clear with him from the start about what she can and cannot do. He has allowed Merle to provoke him into complaining when all he should be is grateful.

“Stupid f*cker,” he whispers. “Stupid f*ckin’f*cker.”

She is so still as to appear asleep when he exits the bathroom. But when he goes to the bed and climbs in, facing her, her eyes are open, the colour of water below puffy lids. They gaze at each other in silence, her gaze going to the bruise on his cheek, to his mouth and finally to his eyes.

“You…love me?” she asks, the words a delicate scrape of sound. She seems puzzled, as though wondering what she has misunderstood. He nods, reddening, already embarrassed by the confession he was so relieved to make.

“But…when?” she replies slowly, bewilderedly. He presses his lips together, afraid to measure in himself the answer to her question. Before he knew it was love, it presented as anger, as jealousy, as something close, in moments, to hatred. It shames him now.

“Been a long time,” he whispers at last. “Since before I was anythin’ much to you at all.”

Her brow furrows and she bites her lip, her lashes wet. She extends a hand across the space between them, slipping her fingertips between the buttons of his shirt so they are resting against his skin. He lies very still. Her fingers skim across his sternum, her eyes dropping to his chest.

“I hoped it would be enough,” she says, her voice as light as her touch. “What we had, I wanted it to be enough even though—it wasn’t. I wasn’t.” She takes a hiccuping breath, and her mouth pulls down at the corners. He brings a hand to hers, cupping it against his sternum. Her fingers twitch beneath his, her voice hoarse as she continues.

“And now I’m so—I can’t lose you, even though I—shouldn’t try to keep you.” Her fingers curl, her nails hard against his skin, and she gives a laugh that melts into a sob. “I love you too. And it makes me afraid. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No.” He shifts nearer to her, so they are face to face, their legs tangling together under the comforter, and he cups her cheek with one hand, swiping away tears with his thumb. “Don’ be sorry. Don’ ever be sorry.”

She closes her eyes, and he kisses her forehead, tastes the salt in the fine hair at her temple.

“I’m scared too,” he whispers, his forehead resting against hers. “Of hurtin’ you. Losin’ you.” He swallows. “Scared of never properly knowin’ you.”

She is silent, but she tucks herself against him and he rolls onto his back, her head settling on his chest as he holds her. She is heavy with exhaustion, her arm limp across his belly. It must be close to dawn, he thinks.I love you too. She said it with such regret, as though she were burdening him.

“Will you tell me again?” The question is shy, a whisper, but there is a note of hunger in it that breaks his heart a little.

“I love you. So goddamn much.” Heat spreads up his throat to his cheeks.

“Even after—all the things you—saw?” Her voice has shrunk further, and there is a ripple of tension through her muscles. He thinks of the jewellery store, of the nights sitting with Sophia while Carol was with Ed, of the house where he died.

“Made me crazy,” he admits softly. “Nearly lost my mind knowin’ what he was doin’.” His next breath is painful, his chest tight. “But you’re askin’ if it made me love you less? Jesus, Carol...” He trails off, lost in thought for a moment. “You remember that mornin’ in the woods after we camped?” His hand jerks on her shoulder, his arm tightening around her. “In the fog. You were in the river, an’ I—”

“I remember.” The words are low and ashamed, and he shakes his head against the pillow.

“Never seen anyone so beautiful.” He clears his throat. “Never wanted—” He stops, exhaling loudly, his face burning. She pushes herself up on one elbow and looks down at him, her eyes swollen from crying.

“You’re the—” Her voice stalls. “—the beautiful one.” She brings her hand to his face. “Here—” Her fingers drift to his heart, her palm pressing down over it. “—and here.”

He gazes up at her, sees the anticipation and the fear in her eyes, and makes himself ask anyway.

“Can you try?” he whispers. “Please? To—to talk to me?” His throat closes, her face blurring above him. “Please, Carol. Not now, but—some time?”

Her mouth trembles, but she nods, a quick dip of her chin before she lowers her head to his chest once more. He closes his eyes, his limbs watery with relief, and when he can speak again he murmursI love youagainst her hairline.I love you,andI love you. Perhaps if he says it often enough, she will learn to trust that it is permanent.

xxxx

She takes Sophia with her to register the next morning. The girl studies her carefully over breakfast, her eyes darting between her mother and Daryl, and as soon as they have left the apartment block, Sophia tugs on Carol’s hand. The rain has stopped, though the day is chilly and damp, and they have stepped out at the time most people seem to be leaving for work. Carol nods and smiles at the men and women passing them, many of them carrying toddlers, or walking with older children. Everyone is friendly; everyone looks well fed and happy.

“Mama?”

She looks down at her daughter, her pinched white face, the lines of worry around her eyes.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“Are you okay?” Sophia’s hand squeezes hers unconsciously. “After Daryl fought with Merle, was he mad?”

The unspoken question buried in the words makes Carol feel oddly defensive of Daryl, who accounted for his bruised cheek matter-of-factly when Sophia expressed concern this morning. Carol lifts a hand self-consciously to her face: pasty and tired, puffy from crying, the smudges under her eyes almost blue. Sophia has seen it all before, and expects it to be accompanied by an injury, perhaps one she cannot see.

“Daryl would never hurt me, Soph.” She cannot keep a note of admonishment from her voice, and Sophia lowers her eyes, her cheeks pink.

“Then why are you sad?” the girl whispers. Her fingers, nails bitten to the quick, grip the edge of her sweater, and she stretches it over the tops of her thighs, the yarn separating into an uneven mesh. Carol’s throat aches with the promise of more tears, and she bites the inside of her cheek, contemplating her child. She tries not to speak of Ed to Sophia, but she is uncertain, now, whether that has done either of them any good.

“I think of your—of Ed often,” she says with difficulty. Sophia peers up at her, startled. “I—dream, or things remind me of him—sounds, smells, conversations.” Carol turns her face towards the town centre, her skin shrinking from the cold. “Remembering him makes me scared to—to—makes it hard for me to be with Daryl sometimes.” Despite her careful choice of words, she blushes, dropping her gaze. But Sophia is watching her with wide, innocent eyes. “And that’s not fair. It makes Daryl sad and it makes me sad.” She gestures at her face, ignoring the lump in her throat. “I was upset about it last night. But I’m going to be braver. Try harder to—move on.”

She stops, depleted. Sophia considers her for another moment, chewing her lip, and then hugs her clumsily. The child is getting taller, the bump of her head against Carol’s chin a small shock, the reach of her skinny arms further than it was the last time Carol paid attention. The embrace is fierce and brief, and Sophia doesn’t meet her mother’s eyes as they separate, taking her hand instead as they head for the town centre.

The HR building was previously an insurance office, its furnishings drab and generic, a stack of old Businessweek magazines on a table near the entrance. Carol is looking at a handwritten list of office numbers and roles stuck to the old reception desk when someone says her name. She turns, her finger on the listing she has just found which saysRegistration — Rm 11 — Marge. Aka is in the doorway, smiling at her and Sophia, a narrow white scarf around his neck and his hands in the pockets of a pair of loose woollen slacks. He wears a dark corduroy blazer, one button done up.

“Good morning to you both,” he says. Carol returns the greeting and Sophia smiles shyly. “I saw you coming inside and I thought I might take the opportunity for a chat. I like to meet with all the new residents one by one.” He grins at Sophia. “Or by two, in this case.”

“Of course.” Carol glances at the hallway off which the HR offices branch. “We can come back later.”

Aka waves a hand dismissively. “I can register you. Come.” He stands aside for them at the door. “We can have coffee in my office. Maybe some hot chocolate for Sophia?”

They follow him down the sidewalk to the hospital entrance, and he leads them straight to a flight of stairs, past a waiting room where a pregnant woman is sitting, nervously rearranging her cardigan over her belly. There is no time to linger—Aka climbs quickly, effortlessly, stopping three flights up. They are at the end of a hallway lined with doors, the floor pale blue linoleum, the doors recently painted white. Aka unlocks the first one beside the landing.

These units must, Carol realises as she enters, have been residential before the turn, small, single-bedroom apartments. Everything except the bathroom is contained in one space, which Aka has turned into an office of generous size, well lit by large windows facing onto the town square. A heavy, ornately carved wooden desk stands along the wall nearest the door, two chairs in front of it and a worn leather seat behind it. There are beanbags, an overstuffed pink velvet sofa, a tall, jumbled bookshelf, and a smaller desk with a laptop on it. Between the beanbags, on the rug, are toys: stuffed animals, a plastic tea set, wooden jigsaw puzzles and LEGO. The office looks lived in, welcoming, a reflection of the eclectic interests of its owner. The walls are hung with an array of art that includes African masks and reproductions of the Great Masters, and Aka’s desk has a jar of candy on it, alongside a model of the human heart and a small wire sculpture of a dog.

“It’s never not a mess.” Aka unwinds his scarf and winks at Sophia. “Do you like computer games? I’ve got a few on there.” He points at the laptop, and the child looks uncertainly at Carol, who nods, giving her a reassuring smile.

“Yes please,” Sophia says softly. As Aka switches on the computer and shows her where to find the games, Carol looks surreptitiously around the room for family photographs. There are none.

“Tea?”

She jumps, turning to find the doctor at her elbow. Up close, she can appreciate more fully the symmetry of his face, the glowing good health of his skin and hair.

“Or coffee? I have a machine—” He waves a hand vaguely towards a hunk of chrome on the short kitchen counter against one wall. “A terrible indulgence, but I like to treat my guests.”

“Tea, uh, would be lovely. Thank you…Aka.”

He chuckles. “Chris. Call me Chris.” He urges her to have a seat while she waits for the drink, gesturing towards his desk, and she chooses the chair which allows her to keep an eye on Sophia and the screen blinking in front of her. The girl accepts a cup of cocoa from Aka with a quick smile.

“My father was Hawaiian,” he tells Carol as he brings her a steaming earthenware mug and sets it down in front of her, carrying his to the other side of the desk. He sinks into the leather seat with a sigh. “But my mother was from the Midwest and insisted on a “regular” first name.”

Carol smiles hesitantly. “Merle says you came here from Emory?”

“Uh huh. Professor of Alternative Medicine, the black sheep of the faculty.” He grins at her. “I have a love for research that almost matches my passion for treating patients. And I enjoy teaching.”

She looks down, conscious of her relative lack of education, of the fact that in her old life she would never have interacted with a man like this in any context. Aka wheels his chair in a little, clearing his throat.

“I’m sorry for ambushing you,” he says, and his voice is suddenly gentle, kind in a way the words do not really require. Carol flushes.

“It’s—fine. Not a problem at all,” she replies, reaching for her mug. The sides are hot, but she presses her palms to them and holds the tea in her lap, steam condensing on her skin as it drifts past her face.

“Your apartment’s all in order?” Aka asks.

“It’s great. Thank you.” She senses he is trying to draw her out, but she is tired and at a loss as to what to talk about. His gaze shifts to Sophia.

“She’s a sweet child.” He gives a small, wistful smile. “Smart, too—she’s beating those levels faster than most.” He looks back at Carol, whose fingers have clamped more tightly around the mug at the mention of her daughter.

“Do you have—family of your own?” Her voice scratches oddly, her throat sore from last night. A spasm of something—sadness, perhaps—passes across Aka’s face.

“I think of everyone here as my family,” he says quietly. Pity stirs in her, and he must see something in her expression, because his gaze sharpens. “You’re an empath, aren’t you, Carol? You feel deeply for those around you.”

Flustered, she gives a nervous laugh.

“I don’t know about that.” She looks down at her lap. The tea is something herbal, chamomile perhaps, the scent sweetish and floral.

“I think you are.” His voice is smooth, his intonation mellow and pleasant. “It must have made life with your late husband that much worse.”

Her head snaps up, tea splashing onto her fingers. Aka is watching her closely.

“Merle. But mostly Shane Walsh, in fact,” he says without waiting for her to ask. He leans back in his seat, folding his hands across his stomach. “I spoke to him and some of the others yesterday. Andrea. T-Dog. Individually.” He co*cks his head to one side. “It’s always interesting to me what people are willing to share, and why. Shane? He’s very chatty for someone who used to be a cop.”

Carol shifts in her seat, glancing at Sophia and back at Aka, who gives her an apologetic look.

“He tried to impress me by telling me about all of you.” He sighs. “In doing so, he revealed more about himself than anyone else, but I took note of what he shared anyway.” He leans forward again, one hand resting on the desk between himself and Carol. He wears a gold signet ring, and his nails are clean and trimmed. “I’m sorry for what you suffered.”

“We’ve all suffered,” she says dismissively, ignoring the sting of tears in her eyes, keeping her gaze lowered. “Ed is dead.”

“Mmm.” The doctor takes a sip of tea, and idly turns a silver pen on his blotter, rotating it one way and then the other. “You’re happier with Daryl? He’s…different?”

There is a weight to the question which she knows he is trying to conceal from her the same way Sophia does. Carol meets his eyes to make sure her answer has an equal weight.

“Yes,” she says clearly. “Much, much happier.”

He studies her for a second before he nods. The laptop plays a jaunty electronic melody, and Sophia laughs. She has forgotten her mother and the doctor, and Carol smiles at how absorbed she is, how distant from her earlier consternation.

“I thought Sophia might visit the school this morning.” Aka’s voice pulls her attention back to him. Carol grimaces.

“She’s not ready yet, I’m afraid.” She takes a drink. “She didn’t much enjoy school before—all this.” Again, Carol’s cheeks grow hot. “She’s an anxious child. Her father—”

Aka nods swiftly. “I understand.” But then he hesitates, and frowns. “He—abused her too?”

“He didn’t hit her.” Carol’s voice is low. “He—he—had an unnatural interest in her, but he didn’t get the chance to, uh, to act on it.” She isn’t sure why she is telling the man all of this, other than that he seems to want to know; and that there is something comforting in the way he listens.

“You’re very strong,” he says now, and she thinks of Daryl, who believes the same about her. Why then, she wonders, does she feel constantly like she is coming apart, like all that holds her together is the pressure of other people’s expectations? Aka slides a box of Kleenex across the desk, and she realises with dismay that she is crying a little. “Here,” the doctor says softly. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re safe.”

She wipes her face and blows her nose before she tries to speak. “Thank you. I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“No need to apologise,” he replies, and starts to tell her about his work overseeing the hospital, his involvement in medical treatment for some of citizens of Thomasville. He has a tentative theory, he tells her, that the outbreak has affected people’s heath in ways that aren’t yet clear. Everyone in the community has regular blood tests, and Aka keeps meticulous records for the purposes of research. Carol half listens, letting the timbre of his voice calm her, sipping her tea until her swallowing is easier and her eyes are dry. When she has pulled herself together, he guides the conversation back to Sophia.

“She’s not the only child here who isn’t happiest in a classroom,” he says, nodding towards the girl. “There are others, and we have a special arrangement for them here, with me.”

Carol frowns, and he smiles at her.

“Instead of school, I do classes with them—the necessary fundamental education, but with some extras included, and some practical learning in the community.” He inclines his head, shrugging. “I think Sophia would be a good fit for the group. But I’ll let you and her—and Daryl—think about it.”

He gets up, signalling the end of the meeting, and Carol finds herself mildly disappointed to have to leave the comfortable office, the company of this warm, engaging man. He rests his fingertips on his desk as she stands, an earnest expression on his face, and as she turns to call Sophia he speaks.

“I don’t mean to overstep.” He glances down for a second as she looks at him. “So think of this as coming from a doctor.” He lifts his eyes, and for the briefest moment she is aware of his gaze travelling up her body. “Thomasville is a place of security and relative wealth, in this world’s terms. We encourage—family life. Diligent healthcare.” He taps his fingers lightly on the wood. “If you were to consider…conceiving another child, I want you to know that folic acid supplements are available. We recommend starting them as a precaution whenever unprotected intercourse is occurring, to ensure the wellbeing of a foetus should conception take place.”

Carol stares at him.

“I’m unable to conceive,” she says slowly. He is only the second person she has ever told, and she longs for Daryl suddenly, overwhelmingly.

“Ah.” Aka tilts his chin, pursing his lips. “A pity.” He glances at Sophia. For the first time during their conversation, he seems to have lost control of the exchange, thrown by Carol’s revelation. Mortified, she crosses to her daughter, laying a hand on her shoulder.

“Time to go, sweetheart,” Carol says. When she glances back, Aka is watching them thoughtfully. Sophia stands up obediently, though her disappointment is clear.

“I hope you’ll come back soon,” the doctor says to the girl, so sincerely that Carol almost forgets her disquiet of a moment before. He raises his eyes to Carol’s, the corners creased in a smile. “And you too. I’ve enjoyed our talk.”

Chapter 38

Chapter Text

He is glad to be alone for a while that morning. Carol was already up when he woke, a dull headache behind his eyes, and she avoided his gaze, his touch, when he went through to the kitchen, swerving past him with coffee and bowls of oatmeal. She must have slept only an hour or so after their argument, and her face is so pale and swollen that Sophia looks distraught each time her eyes shift to her mother over breakfast. Daryl’s face is not much better, but to his relief the girl asks what happened to him and he is able to explain, somewhat sheepishly, that he was “wrestling” with Merle.

He has just a moment with Carol before she leaves the apartment. Sophia goes to brush her teeth, and he finds her mother in the kitchen, rinsing dirty dishes. He stands beside her at the sink. Her hands stop moving under the faucet, water running unchecked over her wrists and spilling between her fingers.

“I love you,” he says quietly. She answers without hesitation, her head bent, her shoulder brushing his arm.

“I love you too.”

When she returns with Sophia from registration, she is home only briefly before disappearing again, this time to visit Andrea at Block B. Sophia, offered the option of going to see Carl or staying home, opts to stay home with Daryl, much to his surprise. It has been some time since they were alone together, and he is unaccountably nervous when the front door closes behind Carol. Sophia is in the living room with a book, curled up in the corner of the couch where he found Carol asleep last night. The girl isn’t reading, but gazing out the apartment window at the sky, which is a soft, luminous grey.

“Good to see it again,” Daryl says, and Sophia turns her head to look at him, her freckles stark, her skin an eerie white in the muted brightness from outside.

“Yeah,” she says, and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile. She ducks her head, tracing the title on the cover of her book, and he hesitates in the doorway. He misses her—misses chess games and knife practice, the quietness in her which matches the quietness in him. But he is unsure whether he is welcome here right now, with his battered face, with Carol so clearly having been upset during the night.

“I think it’ll be nice to be—to live here. Like this.” Sophia doesn’t look up from the book as she speaks. “With you and Mama.”

“Will it?” he asks with genuine uncertainty. “You ain’t missin’ Carl yet?”

Her mouth lifts in a smile, a lock of hair slipping across her profile. “He’s right down the hallway,” she says, and glances at Daryl sideways, amusem*nt in her voice. He walks over to the couch and takes a seat at the opposite end, wanting to smoke even though he can still taste last night’s box.

“Is your face sore?” She rearranges herself, turning her knees towards him, and resting her cheek on the back of the couch as she watches him.

“Nah,” he says. “My fault, anyway. Let Merle get under my skin.” He sighs, letting his head fall back, and closes his eyes for a moment. “Shoulda come home for dinner with you and your momma.”

The girl is silent, and in the stillness of the apartment he hears the echo of Carol’s sobbing last night as he told her he loved her. He lifts his head, rubbing tiredly at his face.

“She’s going to try.” The words are offered with a note of pleading, and he turns to look at the child. Her expression is earnest, her eyes wide with concern. “She said she’s going to try and—and think less about Daddy.”

Daryl swallows, and looks down at his hands, picking at a strip of dry skin on one palm. The couch cushion shifts as Sophia clasps her book to her chest.

“‘Cause it makes you sad when she remembers him.” She sounds less and less certain as she speaks, as though anticipating a reprimand. His chest tightens, the ache reaching up into his throat.

“That what your momma says?” he asks quietly. There is a faint rustle as the girl nods, her hair brushing the fabric of the couch. He glances at her, finds her face set like stone, only a shimmer in her eyes giving away what she is feeling.

“It ain’t—ain’t the rememberin’ that makes me sad,” he says. “It’s that your momma—she feels it—she does it all on her own.”

He frowns, words failing him in what seems like a crucial conversation. Sophia’s mouth twists.

“‘Member when you told me ‘bout your ankle?” he asks. Her cheeks turn pink.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

“Was good, you doin’ that. Right?” He is gambling, unsure whether she regrets showing him the scar on her leg. She nods slowly. His voice is hoarse when he continues. “Can’t stand seeing’ your momma—seein’ her scared or sad an’ not tellin’ anyone.”

“But it’s hard.” The child’s eyes are filled with tears, but there is a defensive note in her voice as she lifts her head to look straight at Daryl. “To tell.”

He nods, unable to speak for a second. “Yeah, it is,” he manages at last. “‘’S real hard an’ I ain’t no good at it either.” He scowls, determined not to let Sophia see how shaken he is from last night. She blinks, and he looks away, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the callus on his palm.

“I used to go to my room,” she says suddenly. “She made me go to my room and lock the door, but I listened.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “So she wasn’t all alone.”

Daryl’s stomach churns with a sour, acid grief. He cannot look at the child, not yet, not before he is sure his face is under control.

“But sometimes I covered my ears and got under the bed.” Her intonation rises unevenly, until it is high and distressed. “And then I couldn’t hear no matter what he did.”

I left her all aloneis what she means, and Daryl hears it clear as day, feels it as though she has cut the words into his skin. He moves across the cushions until he is next to her, his arm sliding around her shoulders as she covers her face. Her knees, bony and sharp, poke his ribs as she leans into the embrace, tucked against his side. He wants to soothe her, but he cannot even soothe himself.

“Did the same,” he says. His breath stutters strangely. “When I was a kid, when my daddy—” He thinks of the musty, rubbery smell of under-the-bed, the sound of his mother crying through the flimsy walls of their cabin. “I did the same.”

The girl sniffs, wipes at her face, keeping her head bent beside his shoulder so he cannot see her expression. He makes himself return to his childhood bedroom, to the filthy house and the empty fridge, to the rhythmic grunting of his father and the thick dust under the bed. It is like dipping a hand in boiling water, the pain delayed by a second, and so intense when it comes that he bites his lip until he tastes blood. His mother becomes Carol, his father Ed, and he pulls the girl at his side closer with a movement that is almost rough.

“She knew you were safe,” he says harshly. “An’ that was enough. Alright Soph? That was all you hadda do. Hide an’ be safe.”

Knowing it is true does nothing for his guilt; knowing that Carol would prefer that her daughter hear and see nothing does not convince him the same was true of his own mother. She would call for him sometimes after his father had left, summon him to a room that stank of blood and alcohol and sem*n, and hug him as she cried herself to sleep.My sweet boy my babymy angel.He feels sick thinking of it, the things he saw that made no sense to him at five, at six, but came into sharp relief as he grew up.

Sophia, however, seems to have found comfort in his words. She has stopped crying, her arms wrapped around her knees, her body resting more loosely against his. He becomes conscious of the weight of his arm over her shoulders, the size of his hand on her ribs, and stiffens, Ed’s leering face hovering before him. Daryl lifts his hand, moves his arm awkwardly, and Sophia looks up at him, a wrinkle in her brow. They stare at one another, his face growing hot, and then she reaches up and takes his hand in hers where it hovers above her shoulder, pulling it down, tilting her head so her cheek grazes his knuckles. A moment later, she has retreated to her corner of the couch and he is cradling the hand she held as though it has retained some trace of the gesture.

“We saw Aka this morning.”

He lets go of his hand. “Thought you were registerin’.”

“He saw us there and invited us to his office.” She sounds pleased, and he glances across sharply.

“You an’ your momma?”

She nods. Carol said nothing of the visit when she returned, but she was barely home before leaving for Andrea’s.

“He gotta—nice office?”What did he say to you? To Carol?

“Oh it’ssonice, Daryl. He has lots of books and a computer with games and he made me hot chocolate and something for Mama and—”

“He talk much?” He tries to keep his voice light, but the words are almost a growl. The girl appears not to notice.

“To Mama, yeah. I don’t know what about though, because I was playing on the computer.”

Daryl chews at a hangnail on his left hand and frowns deeply.

“He’s a nice person, Daryl.” Her voice has sobered. “He’s—kind and not scary.”

“Huh.” He wonders, restlessly, when Carol will be home. Wonders why he is uncomfortable with the thought of her and Sophia having been alone with Aka.Jealousy, he thinks bitterly.Ain’t rocket science to work that out.The community leader is everything Daryl is not—warm, charismatic, preternaturally good looking, and well educated. Feeling Sophia’s gaze on him, he glances at her, and tries to smile. She watches him solemnly.

“Would you like to play chess?” she asks, her eyes blue and anxious.

“Yeah,” he says. "Sure."

xxxx

They are invited to dinner in the Grimeses’ apartment, along with the rest of the group—a chance to debrief, Rick says when he comes to the door to announce the gathering. Carol, who has just walked in, is still taking her coat off when the knock comes. She tells Rick they’ll be there, kisses Sophia on the head as the girl departs with Rick to visit Carl, and turns from the front door to see Daryl at the end of the hallway, one shoulder against the wall, his hands tucked into his armpits.

“Hey,” he says. Her mouth goes dry. Truth be told, she has deliberately been avoiding him today, raw from their argument, inexplicably worried about having told him how she feels about him.

“Hey,” she replies. His brow creases, and a moment passes before he speaks again.

“‘M sorry for last night.” He shifts against the wall, looks down at his feet. “Had no right to speak to you like that.”

“Yes you did.”

He looks up, his eyebrows raised. Carol walks towards him, conscious of every step, of the the distance between them closing. She stops in front of him.

“You had a—right to be upset.” Misery seeps into her bones.

Daryl considers her for a long moment, his expression pensive, and then lifts a hand to his mouth and worries a nail with his teeth.

“You got somethin’ on your mind still,” he says eventually. His tone is careful, but his gaze is fixed on her intently, and Carol lowers her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she says quickly, and he huffs out a soft sigh.Try. “I—I don’t—I don’t want to let you down.”

“Couldn’ if you tried,” he replies immediately, fiercely, and she flinches from his confidence, his certainty that she is what he imagines her to be. All day, she has pondered his love for her, the circ*mstances in which it arose, the unlikelihood of it. He has seen her battered and humiliated, placating her husband any way she knows how. What was there to love in that woman? What is there to love in this one, half made as she is?

She looks up at him. There is determination in his face, but also despair, a flicker of hopelessness that, paradoxically, awakens some resolve in her. She forces a smile, and walks past him, towards the kitchen.

“I had a visit with Aka today,” she says lightly, filling the kettle as she speaks. Daryl follows her into the kitchen.

“Soph said.” His voice is wary. “What’d he want?”

Shrugging, she takes two mugs out of the mismatched collection in a cupboard above the counter.

“To get to know us a bit, I guess. Tell us about this place.” She hesitates, cool porcelain beneath her fingertips, and says more quietly, “He knew about Ed. What he was like.”

“Merle,” Daryl says, the syllable bristling with anger. She shakes her head quickly, turning to glance at him.

“Mostly Shane, apparently. Aka spoke to some of the others yesterday and Shane was…informative.” She grimaces and opens a canister of teabags. They are old; they have clearly been in the tin since the turn, their paper slightly yellowed. But they are drinkable, and she drops a couple into the mugs. She feels, rather than hears Daryl approach, sudden warmth at her back, and then the fingers of one hand at her waist in an almost weightless touch.

“Aka ask you questions ‘bout Ed?” He has schooled the anger from his voice; it is low and careful now. She shakes her head without turning from the counter.

“No, not really. Just—about Sophia, whether he—whether she—”

Daryl makes a soft sound of acknowledgement in his throat, and she stops speaking with relief. His hand lingers at her waist, and when she lifts her head, sighing, his shoulder is right behind her. She leans back against him for a second, closing her eyes.

“He wanted to know if we were planning to—hoping to conceive.” She feels Daryl stiffen, and straightens up. They have not discussed her inability to have more children since she told him about it initially. Perhaps here, surrounded by young families and kids, he will realise he wants children of his own. Babies. Another thing she can’t give him.

“How’s that any of his damn business?” He sounds furious. “What the hell kinda question is that to ask someone you jus’ met?”

She gives a humourless laugh. “He was offering me vitamins.”

There is silence for a moment, and then Daryl moves his hand to her shoulder, tugs it gently to turn her to face him. Flushed, humiliated, she stares at his chest, and his fingers slide along her cheek, cupping her face.

“Carol,” he says softly. Her lashes flutter, salt in the back of her throat, and she meets his gaze with difficulty. His face is worried, not angry. He looks like he might speak, but instead he leans down and kisses her mouth, a soft, searching kiss, his lips clinging dryly to hers as he lingers.Try, she thinks, and breathes in his scent, the woody smell of his skin, the sting of tobacco mingling with it. Slowly, she parts her lips a little, catching his lower lip, tugging at it without really knowing what she is doing. Daryl moans, his other hand rising to her face so he is cradling it, and the tip of his tongue darts across her mouth. The kiss is smoother suddenly, slicker, her lips sliding against his, and she relaxes a little as he tastes her again. He does not push his tongue into her mouth, does not make her feel like he is trying to smother her the way Ed did. Instead, he licks at her lower lip, at the place where it curves inwards, and then traces the shape of her upper lip in a delicate arc.

He is breathing heavily when they break apart, the bulge in his pants bumping her hip as he hangs his head beside hers, his hair tickling the side of her face. His hands rest on the counter on either side of her. She strokes his back, the rigid, rounded muscles. She is warm, not merely from his proximity but from a heat in her belly that spreads outwards, searching for something she can’t name. Daryl’s mouth brushes the curve of her neck, finding the spot where she is most sensitive and settling there, his tongue caressing it as he suckles. His co*ck twitches, nudging her. She reaches between them, fumbling for his fly, and he lifts his head, his hand catching hers. His pupils are blown, his mouth wet, his chest flushed above the collar of his shirt.

“Nah,” he rasps. She frowns, and he lifts her hand to his mouth, kissing the palm, shutting his eyes as he flicks his tongue along a crease in her skin. Closing her fingers in his, he looks at her again. “Kettle’s boilin’.”

He is right. The lid rattles, steam drifting past the couple. Carol stares at his hands around hers, at the straining fly of his jeans, and lifts her gaze to his face, bewildered.

“I can—”

He shakes his head, and anxiety seizes her, her fingers squeezing into a fist in his grasp. His eyes drop to her chest, and she realises that her nipples are hard, poking the fabric of her shirt. Her blush deepens. Slowly, so slowly, Daryl lifts a hand from hers and moves it up, towards her right breast, his breathing audible; and just as she is about to pull back, her fear of pain too great, he brushes his thumb once over her nipple.

It is as though a current has passed from his body into hers, an aching heat that travels from her breast into the pit of her stomach. She inhales sharply, and Daryl lifts his eyes to hers, his chest rising and falling visibly with each breath.

“Is this okay?” he says hoarsely, and she nods, and then his hand shapes itself hesitantly to the curve of her breast, the warmth of his fingers reaching her through the fabric of her shirt and bra as he cups the soft flesh. Her nipple pushes against his palm, and he makes a choked, panicked sound, his eyes closing.

“I’m gonna—” He groans, coming, his other hand going to the crotch of his pants to try and conceal from her the jerking of his erection, the spreading stain. She reaches for him, drawing his head down to her shoulder, hugging him as his fingers twitch against her breast.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, and strokes the back of his neck. “I love you. It’s okay.”

xxxx

She does not laugh at him. She has never laughed at him for his desire, for the mortifying lack of control he has near her. Christ, he wasn’t even touching her skin, just groping her through a shirtand bra, but the stiff nub of her nipple and the weight of her breast—which he has dreamed of and imagined so many times—pushed him over the edge. His head spins as he goes to the bedroom to change, his hand tingling with the memory of her shape, the supple give of her flesh.

There are two mugs of tea on the coffee table when he comes back through. Carol is waiting for him on the couch and smiles shyly at him. He cannot help looking at her breasts, thinking of how it would feel to reach under her shirt and—he drags his eyes back to her face.

“Are you okay?” he makes himself ask, though he is afraid of the answer. But she nods, a hand drifting unconsciously to her chest and resting there for a moment. He goes to sit with her, and she fits herself against his side, pulling her knees up, her head on his shoulder. Unseen by her, he grins stupidly at the wall across the room. There is such trust, such ease in her posture.

“Areyouokay?” she asks.

“‘Fine,” he says. “‘Mbarrassed.”

She chuckles softly, resting her hand on his knee. “Don’t be.” She looks up at him. Her eyes are bright and amused, but there is a soft sincerity in her face too. “It was a pleasant surprise that my—that you liked—” She stops, her face falling a little, and looks down.

“Your tit*?” he says gruffly. “sh*t, Carol. Been eyein’ ‘em for a long time.” He peers down at her quickly. “It okay to say that?”

Her fingers stroke his kneecap, finding the hollows, the hard bony ridge. “Of course it’s okay,” she murmurs. “And it—it felt nice. When you, uh…touched me.”

He leans forward, trying to see her face. Her head is bowed, her cheeks pink. Gently, he touches her chin, lifts her head. A jolt passes through him as she meets his eyes, because hers are dark with something he hasn’t seen before. She blinks, and he releases her chin, stunned into silence.

“You’re so gentle,” she says quietly, shyly, by way of explanation. “You treat me like—like I’m fragile. I’m not,” she adds hastily, taking her hand from his knee and folding it into her lap. “But it’s so different to how Ed was.”

He tenses for the briefest second at the other man’s name, and Carol’s muscles mimic his instantly.It makes you sad when she remembers him. He curses himself inwardly, and forces himself to relax.

“When you first married him,” he says, wanting to encourage her to talk more. “Was it—was he…” He trails off. He does not want to know if Ed was once good to Carol, if she loved him, if she was happy for a while. But neither does he want to hear the opposite.

“He was…himself right from our wedding night,” she replies, and reaches down to scratch her ankle, the movement intended to keep her face concealed, Daryl thinks. “It wasn’t like there hadn’t been clues, I just—I was in love, and I was barely out of girlhood.”

In love. Daryl thinks of Ed, the blunt cruelty in him, the arrogance, remembers the half-light of a store where Ed fingered little girls’ underwear and spoke of Sophia.

“He made me feel safe.” Carol’s voice is muffled. “I was nineteen, and my parents had died recently, and he—he took charge of my life. Saved me from being alone.” She laughs dryly. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? I was so desperately lonely that I was—wilfully blind.”

“Ain’t pathetic,” he says. She shakes her head but doesn’t look at him. He remembers sitting on the floor at his father’s feet as a kid, lining up empty beer bottles while his old man watched TV, listening to him laugh at some stupid show and gazing up at him, hoping his daddy might look down and that his smile, for just a moment, might be for Daryl. “Ain’t pathetic wantin’ to be—to have someone.”

“Youmade it this far without needing anyone,” she replies, a teasing note in her voice. He shifts uncomfortably, his fingers curling against her collarbone.

“Thought it wasn’ meant for me,” he mutters. “‘S all.”

“Why?” The question is soft enough that he could choose to ignore it, and he is tempted to do so. But she has tried—istrying—and he will too.

“‘Cause of how I am.” He has to drag the words up and out, battle an instinct that tells him to clam up and leave. Carol’s hand returns to his knee, stroking circles on it.

“And how is that?” She tilts her head back and looks at him, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. She knows him, he tells himself. Knows him better than anyone ever has, probably, except Merle, not because he has told her everything but because she sees him, senses him, has held him as he came and cried into her hair. Nothing he says will surprise her. But articulating his faults, his oddities, still feels like a risk, and his voice is unsteady at first when he answers her.

“A screw-up. Nothin’ to offer.” Her fingers do not slow their movement on his knee, and he focuses on them. Their rhythm makes it easier to talk. “Ain’t ever been good at stuff with other people. Talkin’.” He swallows. “Touchin’.”

Her palm cups his knee, and she gazes up at him. This time, he meets her eyes.

“I think you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she says. “That’s what I think.”

He snorts and looks away again, remembers coming just inside her as he pinned her to the cupboard in the RV, her body taut with pain, his co*ck pulsing between her thighs.

“An’ you give me too much,” he retorts. “Ain’t always gentle with you. Ain’t always careful like I should be.”

“You’ve never tried to hurt me,” she says stubbornly.

He doesn’t reply. Beingnot Edis a low bar; but perhaps it’s as low as it needed to be for Daryl to qualify.

“You spoke to Sophia this morning?” The determined change of subject is signalled by a false cheer in Carol’s voice, and he wonders which memory necessitated the shift. A memory of Ed? Or a memory of Daryl?

“Yeah.” Silence. Daryl closes his eyes and takes a breath. “You spoke to her too. ‘Bout last night.”

“Yeah.” Carol lifts her hand from his knee and touches her face, her fingertips pressing on the puffy skin around her eyes. “She was worried about me.” She clears her throat. “She assumed if I was—if I was crying then Ed—I mean then you—”

Even having spent time with Sophia himself this morning, even with the sensation of her fingers on his hand still vivid, Daryl is stung by the revelation, almost as bitter, for a second, as he was when he got home last night.

“She’s trying to make sense of us, Daryl. She doesn’t have a, a model.”

“Rick an’ Lori?” Daryl snaps. “Lori cries plenty an’ Rick ain’t smackin’ her around.”

Carol moves away from him, her arms folded across her chest, to the other end of the couch. Daryl stares down at his hands, ignoring the pang of regret that slices through him.

“They’re a very confusing example.” Her voice is cool. “Sophia knows about Shane. And she’s sat in the car and listened to them argue about everything from the weather to Carl’s socks like they—like they hate each other.”

“An’ what’s she seen us do?” he asks. Carol looks over at him. He keeps his head bent, and she doesn’t speak for a moment.

“She’s seen us take care of each other.” The ice is gone from her tone. “And now she knows that it’s possible for us to argue without anyone getting—punished.” Her voice drops, tender and wistful. “You really care about her, don’t you?”

He shrugs, reddening, scowling at his lap. He has no right to be so fond of the girl; his affection is uninvited, just like his love for Carol was for so long.

“She cares for you too,” Carol whispers. “Despite what he did, what he wanted to do to her.” Her voice cracks. “Give her some grace, Daryl. She’s figuring it out.”

He nods, unable to look at her, so much feeling snarled up inside him that the pressure in his chest is almost unbearable.

“Come here,” she says softly.

Instead of moving to her, he pulls his feet up and lies down on his side, his knees bent, his head in her lap because he does not want to look at her until the pressure has eased. Her fingers are in his hair as his eyes close, stroking it back from his face, drawing out his shame, his wretchedness, his hurt, until all that is left in him is a small bubble of joy, the sound of Sophia laughing as they played chess.

Chapter 39

Chapter Text

Carol offers to take over the dinner preparation when they arrive at the Grimeses’ apartment, but the deputy’s wife waves her off. Thomasville seems to have drawn Lori out of her depression, restored to her some of the confidence she lost as her pregnancy progressed and her anxiety over the birth grew. Her hair is clean and brushed, and she greets the group with smiles and genuine warmth as they trickle into the apartment. It is clear that she and her family are here to stay, at least until after the baby is born.

To a lesser extent, everyone else is also changed by the move. Shane looks relaxed, at ease in a way he wasn’t in the bunker, and T-Dog greets Carol with a wide smile.

“Missin’ your cookin’ already,” he says. “Missin’ your face too.”

Carol shakes her head and chuckles. From his spot leaning against the living room wall, Daryl—who explained the bruise on his face to the others by muttering simplyMerle—scowls at the man speaking to her. T-Dog glances over at him.

“Settle down,” he says jocularly. “Ain’t puttin’ the moves on your girl.”

Daryl snorts. From one of the bedrooms comes the sound of Sophia and Carl arguing amiably over the rules of a boardgame they found in a cupboard. The Grimeses’ apartment has three bedrooms, a larger living room than Carol and Daryl’s, and it was clearly modernised shortly before the turn. The kitchen is open plan, the light fittings geometric chrome abstractions, and the windows are fitted with slatted wooden blinds instead of curtains.

“We get extra food,” Lori told Carol when she arrived. “Because of the baby.” She stroked her bump, flushed with happiness. “Fresh food.”

Maggie and Glenn are on the ground floor of a different apartment block. The young couple toured practically the whole town yesterday, including the school and the sizeable vegetable garden behind Blocks A-C. The community sends groups on regular runs into Savannah and sometimes further afield in search of supplies, but they do their best to be self-sufficient too. The school has a yard where some chickens live and breed, and there is a roster for eggs. A herd of goats provides milk—primarily for orphaned infants, or those whose mothers cannot breastfeed, but also for the community at large. Carol is cheered by the thought of food that doesn’t come out of a packet or a can.

“They hunt?” Daryl asks Glenn from his spot against the wall. Glenn, squeezed next to Maggie at one end of a couch, nods.

“Yup. Got a hunting—pack or whatever, I dunno. In the woods round here. And Aka says they also fish at the coast sometimes.”

Daryl nods, reluctantly impressed. Carol hasn’t yet told him about Aka’s schooling proposal for Sophia—their meeting with the leader seems to have unsettled him, even without that information. He glances at her across the living room, looking away before she can smile, pushing himself off the wall and heading for the room where the kids are playing.

Dinner is chicken soup, although it contains no actual chicken: just stock cubes dissolved in a pot of hot water, two-minute noodles added in generous quantity. Lori, a reliable cook if not a creative one, throws some kidney beans in at the last minute and announces that the meal is ready for consumption. They eat mostly in their laps, only Maggie, Lori, Andrea and Shane at the dining room table, the children cross-legged on the floor. The soup is salty and hot and not much else, but the food is secondary to the pleasure of being together after so many days apart. Carol talks to T-Dog, who waves her over to the seat beside him, and to Rick, who can’t stop reciting all the ways in which the town is the perfect place for Lori to give birth. Daryl sits on the floor below the window, outside all of the conversations, his hair hanging in his face as he hunches over his meal.

“What’d Sophia think of the school?” Rick asks Carol. “Carl loved it. Bit shy at first, but he stayed for recess an’ as soon as the boys started kickin’ a ball around…”

“We haven’t visited it yet.” Carol pokes at a stray noodle stuck to the bottom of her bowl and looks up the deputy. “I’m giving her a few days to settle in.” She doesn’t mention Aka’s classes.

“Huh.” Rick frowns slightly. “She‘ll be fine if Carl’s there, surely?”

Carol doesn’t reply, looking across at her daughter, struck again by how Sophia has grown since the farm. Her face is thinner than it was—not from a lack of nourishment, but because she is growing into a different body. Carol thinks of Ed, and wants suddenly to hold her child, to feel her knobbly joints and wiry limbs, the down at the nape of her neck and the smooth curve of her cheek, to be sure that every trace of Ed is gone.

She senses Daryl’s gaze on her. He has paused in his eating, his fingers still on his spoon as he watches her. There is a tension in him that reminds her of how he was at the quarry and on the farm, a defensiveness expressed in the angles of his body, the weight of his silence. Carol gives him a tiny smile, and he drops his gaze, scooping more food into his mouth, ignoring her as T-Dog starts to ask what work she might do in Thomasville.

“I don’t know,” she says, her focus only half on the man to whom she is speaking. “I was a housewife before. Maybe helping out at the distribution centre, or at the school.”

“You’d be good with kids,” T-Dog remarks. Carol glances at him. His face is warm and open, and she feels Daryl watching them again. “You should ask at the school.”

“What about you?” She takes his empty bowl and stacks it in hers. T-Dog shrugs.

“Might volunteer for security. Or maybe runs. I like the sound of the fishin’ trips.”

She smiles at him and looks down at the empty bowls. Merle has put Daryl down for security, although Carol isn’t sure that would be the younger Dixon’s first choice. She squashes a flicker of resentment at Merle, at how his presence has already affected Daryl, and gets to her feet.

“I’ll take these to the kitchen,” she says brightly. T-Dog grins up at her.

“Come back when you’re done,” he replies.

xxxx

He is annoyed by them all: T-Dog, Shane, Rick, Lori, even Glenn with his stupid jokes and the way he drapes himself over Maggie with such ease, such obvious ownership. Across the living room, Carol beams at T-Dog and talks to him like no one else in the room matters, and Daryl feels like he did back at the farm—caught at the edges of things, alone the way he never used to be when Merle was around. Maybe, he thinks, he will visit his brother again after dinner. Pick a fight. Be held, for a moment, in Merle’s ferociously strong, one-handed grip, exchange a bloody nose for that sweaty, sickening hug.

There is a lull in conversation as Lori goes to make coffee and Carol collects the soup bowls. When she reaches Daryl, she stops, looking down at him, and he passes her his dish, avoiding her gaze. He can smell the sweetness of her shampoo. T-Dog must have smelt it too, that citrus scent that is all hers, that ebbs and flows with the movement of her hands as she speaks. She hesitates, now, but he does not invite conversation, and so she leaves him, her step quick, her head bowed.

“Daryl.” Rick’s voice is loud enough for everyone to know that he requires their attention. “What can you tell us about this place? From Merle?”

Daryl squints at him, and shrugs. “Nothin’ you don’t already know.”

Rick frowns slightly. “And Aka? He seems like a good man?”

“Ain’t really discussed him with my brother,” Daryl says, the words edged with resentment. “Been busy catchin’ up on everythin’ that happened since you chained him to that roof.”

It is a lie: his knowledge of Merle’s precise journey to this point is vague at best, and unlikely to get more detailed. But he is angry at the thought that Rick considers him a spy, and the flush on the cop’s face is satisfying to see.

“We’ll know more once we start work,” says Andrea, glancing between the men. “About how the town runs.”

“It runs smoothly.” Lori is in the kitchen doorway, holding a jar of coffee. “We already know that. Look around you. Look at the facilities they have. The people.” She rests a hand on her belly. “They could have killed us or left us to die, but they took us in.”

“Why are they so interested in children?” Carol’s voice, calm and not especially loud, silences everyone.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Lori says defensively. “You don’t believe there could be good people left? People who care about orphans?”

“Not only orphans.” Carol’s face colours, and Daryl leans forward, his fingers twitching on his knees, trying to catch her eye. “Aka seems very interested in—in pregnancy too, judging by my conversation with him.”

“You’re pregnant?” Glenn asks in astonishment, and Daryl senses Sophia’s head turning sharply in his periphery.

“No.” Carol’s blush deepens, her eyes sliding to Daryl’s and away again. “But it came up when Aka spoke to me.”

“Ain’t your goddamn business or his,” Daryl snaps at Glenn, pushing himself upright with his back against the wall. There is confusion on Glenn’s face, embarrassment on Maggie’s. Carol ignores Daryl’s remark, but her discomfort is obvious.

“Maybe he wants to repopulate the earth,” Shane says, and chuckles. One of his hands is under the table, no doubt resting on Andrea’s thigh. “Ain’t the worst mission in the world, is it?” The cop smirks at Daryl. “Or maybe it is for some.”

Daryl’s lip curls in a snarl, but he is acutely aware of Sophia a few feet away from him, listening.

“I’m just saying it’s strange.” Carol’s voice is muffled now, defeated, her gaze lowered.

“Well, it’s—it’s something to remember,” Rick says lamely, frowning at them all. “To, uh, be aware of. But I think this is a good place. We’re lucky.”

Carol and Daryl are among the first to leave, through some tacit agreement, and Sophia does not protest, yawning as they walk along the hallway to the apartment. Carol ushers the girl gently through a pared-down bedtime ritual, and Daryl smokes at the bedroom window as he listens to their voices, soft and sleepy, occasional quiet laughter woven between the other sounds.

He is stubbing out his cigarette when Sophia’s bedroom door clicks shut, thinking of Glenn asking about Carol being pregnant, thinking of T-Dog’s broad grin and Aka’s sculpted features. The curtains are open, and a sliver of moon is wreathed in clouds, its paltry light barely a smudge against the darkness.

“What’s wrong?” She is only just inside the room, and he cannot read her tone, not without turning around and looking at her. He doesn’t move.

“Nothin’s wrong.” He rolls the stub of his cigarette between his fingers, lets ash smear the tips before he drops it into the saucer he is using as an ashtray. There is silence for a moment, and he is filled with frustration at his own lie.

“Okay,” Carol says neutrally, and he turns around. Her expression is grave, her arms folded loosely across her chest, and something inside him twists painfully at the sight of her feet in their blue socks.

“‘S easy with him.” He wants, he realises, to throw a tantrum. He wants to blame someone for everything that makes him awkward and angry, everything that pushes him to the outskirts of the group. A flicker of confusion crosses Carol’s expression. “T-Dog. Talkin’ an’ laughin’ with him. ‘S easy, ain’t it?”

Her face, against all odds, softens, and it makes him madder. Her reply does not help.

“Yes, it is,” she says quietly. Daryl’s mouth pulls into a sneer, and he laughs, a short, harsh sound that falls heavily between them. Carol seems to gather herself, her arms tightening around her middle, her shoulders squaring as she approaches him. In the back of his mind, he understands that she is fighting her own instincts by coming closer to him in his rage, but he is too angry to feel wretched about it now.

She stops in front of him. Her eyes swallow the light from the lamp on the nightstand, so bright and so silver as she looks up at him that he makes a rough, longing sound deep in his throat.

“You know why it’s easy?” she asks gently, and he stares down at her. “Because he barely knows me, Daryl. Because I like him, but I don’t feel anything else for him.” She lifts a hand slowly and touches her fingers to Daryl’s chest, her voice dropping. “I don’t love him. I’m not scared of—scared of losing him.” She blinks, and the silver is suddenly liquid, her hand dropping from his sternum. “This,” she whispers, her gaze sliding to his shoulder so he cannot see her eyes properly anymore. “Us. It matters to me more than anything except Sophia. Every day I’m afraid of losing it. Ruining it.”

He looks past her towards the bedroom door, the dark hallway down which her daughter is sleeping, and remembers how Carol cried endlessly, silently, in the days after the girl went missing. Remembers how she called out when Daryl brought Sophia back alive.More than anything except Sophia. He has never mattered that much to anyone, ever.

She assumes something from his pause, and before he can speak, she turns and goes to close the door, switching off the lamp as she passes the nightstand. He stands unmoving in the darkness until he hears her zipper, and then he takes a step towards the bed. He can barely make her out in the thick night, but he listens to the rustle of fabric and tries to make himself stop her. Tries to need her in some more eloquent, less animal way than this. He is still standing there when the bed creaks under her weight. Her eyes gleam for a second as she looks at him through the gloom, and then she shifts and her silhouette changes, and he moans out loud because she is on all fours, waiting for him, offering herself to him.

He is hard by the time his pants are around his shins, and he stumbles the rest of the way to the bed, reaching for her as he climbs onto the mattress. He hears her intake of breath as his hand brushes her calf, the back of her thigh, and then he is kneeling behind her, cursing as he realises she is naked from the waist down. His hands grasp her ass cheeks, kneading, squeezing, months of desire pulsing through him, and she lowers her head to the bed and parts her legs. She is breathing quickly, a soft pant just audible between his ragged gasps as he grips her ass, his thumbs stroking down either side of the crease between her buttocks. He wants to see her, but the dark offers him only a faint curve, and so he relies on his hands to make out her shape, the swell of flesh, the bones of her lower back.

He lubricates his co*ck with spit and precum, resists fingering her to ease his passage, unsure whether he is permitted to touch her like that yet. There is a delicate tension in her muscles, and he hesitates, the head of his co*ck dripping onto her ass as he tries to make out her profile where her cheek rests on the pillow. He cannot. Neither can he hold himself back. He has wanted her like this for as long as he has wanted her at all, remembers dreaming of her kneeling on the sand of the riverbank before him, and when he enters her now, he does so in a single hard thrust, crying out hoarsely as he sinks deeper than he has been before. She rocks forward as he opens her up, the sheet whispering under her fingers, her walls convulsing at the suddenness with which he takes her, throttling his co*ck, trapping it inside her. His hands slide to her hips, fingertips resting on the bones, and he waits out a moment in which he thinks he might come from the swell of her ass against his pelvis.Mine, he thinks, the only word his mind can form.Mine.

He f*cks her in a rush of short, sharp movements, clutching her hips, grunting with each thud of his body against hers, each bump of his co*ck against her limit. Her ass shakes, her back dipping lower, and he loses himself in the sensation of possessing her, of claiming what she offers, slamming into her faster and faster until, with another cry, he starts to come, his hands moving to her buttocks and grasping them as he does so, pulling them apart as he spills into a heat that seems on the verge of igniting around his length. He wants to watch himself pulse into her, wants to see her entrance cling to the base of his co*ck, his eyes growing slowly accustomed to the darkness. Carol makes no sound beyond breath until his hands close on her ass. As he tugs it open she whimpers, her muscles flexing under his palms, her head lifting from the bed as her back arches. Daryl, lightheaded with the force of his org*sm, groans, pulling out of her as she scrabbles forward, away from him, though there is nowhere to go between him and the wall. He spurts the last of his cum between her ass cheeks. His co*ck is raw and throbbing, coated in his own sticky release, slipping against skin that seems impossibly silky as he bends over her, panting, going soft in the press of her buttocks.

“No,” she says, the word clear and high and trembling, and her knees slide backwards as she sinks onto her belly. He sinks with her, his weight covering her, his co*ck making a slick sound against her skin, and then he struggles to move off her, rolling to the side. He cannot resist, though, refuses to comprehend entirely herno, and as she grips handfuls of the sheet he strokes his fingers down her spine, through the dip in her lower back, into the wet heat between her buttocks.

It takes him a second to realise something is very wrong, a second during which Carol turns her face into the pillow and makes a low, despairing noise that he will hear again and again in the coming weeks, at odd moments during his day when he forgets, for just a second, what he is about to learn. The skin he touches is slippery with cum, but as his fingers caress it, he frowns. It is uneven, the tissue raised in a web of fine ridges, the skin between them unnaturally smooth. Carol is rigid beside him as he traces the lines, down the inside of one buttock and up the inside of the other, and when he gets to the opening between them, brushes a finger against it, he sits up, his other hand reaching for the lamp.

He turns it on. Carol flinches, though her face is buried in the pillow, her arms pulled in beside her head to hide herself. Daryl, aghast, cold with dawning horror, says her name, withdrawing his hand and lifting it up into the light, staring at the wet streaks of sem*n on it.Carol?She does not move. He reaches down again and gently, slowly, uses his thumbs to tug her ass cheeks apart so he can see the burn scars. They are layered, extensive, spilling up to her lower back and down towards her labia, stopping on her perineum just a breath from where she is gaping and red, hollowed out by his co*ck. The flesh around the tight opening above her puss* seems to melt inwards, as though the skin has been dissolved and wiped one way and then the other, the muscle of her hole smooth where it should be furled. Some of the scarring is white, some of it pink, and the texture is rough enough, in places, for Daryl to know that it is deep.

“Carol,” he whispers. She lies absolutely still, exposed to him, his release trickling from her. The suffering expressed by the scars is breathtaking, nauseating. Daryl’s eyes sting as he bends lower over her. He can smell her, smell himself, by the time she finally moves, one hand reaching back and seizing his hair as he exhales, his mouth above her damaged skin. She is not gentle: her fingers twist in terror, dragging at his hair. He sobs, then, soundlessly, even as he fights against her grip and brings his mouth to her flesh, licking the scar tissue in a slow, searching movement. She shudders, his tongue gliding slowly through the salt and bitterness of his cum.

Her fingers go limp in his hair, her hand bumping his shoulder as it falls. She begins to shiver as he licks her, as he holds her open and cleans her, follows the scars up and down, nestles his tongue against the uneven skin of her hole and tastes her. He is crying, tears smearing on the curves of her ass cheeks as he burrows his face between them.I love you, he whispers.

xxxx

If she could move, she would leave—the bed, the room, the apartment. She would leave Daryl and his distress and the sound of his choking breaths, the pressure of his gaze, and the unbearably tender movement of his lips across the ugliest part of her body. But she cannot move, and there is an insistence to his touch that is, in its way, as fierce as the demand of his body when he drove into her minutes before. He kisses and licks her for a long time, never moving from the scar tissue. She is mortified each time he traces the tip of his tongue around the thickened skin of her hole, each time he probes at it, finding the nerves still alive just inside her, making her jerk in his grasp. There is an unexpected comfort in the contact too, despite the trembling she cannot control, despite the waves of panic that make her fingers ache as she grips the comforter.

Daryl weeps through it all, oblivious to or uncaring of his own grief. His tears run down and wet the coarse curls on her labia, salt stinging the opening where he stretched her with his co*ck. He nuzzles her as though seeking his own comfort, his thumbs holding her cheeks apart. Beneath the caress of his lips and tongue, the fire lingers, the click of the lighter loud in her ears, her memory offering her, again and again, the smell of her own flesh melting, the sound of her screams muffled by a pillow.

When he at last lifts his head, she tries to conceal herself. But she gets no further than turning onto her side before he moves up the bed and pulls her against his chest. Between her shoulders, through her shirt, his heart is thudding, and he locks both arms around her. His co*ck, flaccid and warm, notches against the crease of her ass as he holds her, and she squirms with some vestige of terror, a sob rising in her throat.

Please, he begs.Please, and she clutches his forearms, bending her face and rubbing her cheek against the fine hairs. His lips graze the back of her neck. She loves him so much that it feels like a fresh wound, like the slow glide of the flame across her skin.

It takes her a long time to settle in his arms. Each time she starts to give in to his embrace, she thinks of what he has seen and recedes into herself, stiffening and shrinking from him. He senses it, his kisses on the curve of her ear, on the crown of her head, coming just as she starts to withdraw, coaxing her to stay with him. Neither of them speaks. When Daryl starts to grow hard against her ass, he shifts his hips so she cannot feel him, and tucks the comforter between his body and hers from the waist down. Dimly, she wonders that he can still be aroused by her at all.

At last, when she allows herself to sag against his chest, he speaks.

“When?” he asks, his mouth at her ear, the word little more than a sigh.

“A few times over the years,” she replies dully. His arms flex around her. “The last time—the last time it wouldn’t heal and I had to go to hospital.” She remembers the relief of the drip, the thick bandages, the doctor’s cool, light hands and the questions which she answered with lies so ridiculous that both she and the nurse were embarrassed. “After that he stopped.” She thinks of Ed’s pride in his handiwork, of the frequency with which he reminded her of it, and leans her head on Daryl’s bicep, her mouth half against the muscle as she whispers, “I’m sorry you saw it. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you.”

“Jesus Christ.” The words are fissured, tears rising in the cracks. Daryl’s feet tangle with hers through the comforter. “Goddamnit, Carol.” He pushes himself up on one elbow, and his fingers touch her jaw. “Look at me.”

Her chin quivers, and his thumb brushes it, his forehead dropping to her temple. “Look at me.”

She turns her head, her eyes filling. His gaze is dark, his lashes spiky and damp, and before he speaks he presses his lips together tightly, swallowing.

“You’re—God, you’re so beautiful.” He closes his eyes for a second, shaking his head slightly before he opens them. “What he did, the—the ways he marked you, they don’ change that. It breaks my f*ckin’ heart that he hurt you so bad.” His voice trembles, and a tear trickles from the corner of her eye into her hair. “But that’s all, Carol. I want you so bad it’s makin’ me crazy.”

She twists in his arms, turning to face him, tucking her head into the curve of his neck. His pulse is a flutter against her forehead, his hands sliding to the middle of her back. Against her abdomen, through the blanket, she can feel his length, heavy and hot, proof of his words.

“I shoulda asked,” he whispers. “‘Fore I touched you like that. There. After you said no.” She says nothing. One of his hands rests below the nape of her neck, his thumb stroking back and forth. A note of shame enters his voice, a shyness borne of embarrassment. “Why’d you kneel like that? Let me f*ck you from behind?”

She nestles her face against his skin. “Because you needed me to,” she replies.

His chest hitches, his thumb stopping in its movement, and she continues, pre-empting his guilt.

“Sometimes I don’t know what to say, how to tell you in words.” Her voice is hoarse. “Sometimes it’s easier to show you like that.”

“Show me what?” The words strain between them, pushing at her, and she thinks of his hands on her hips, his co*ck filling her completely.

“That I’m yours,” she replies softly, and sighs, shutting her eyes as sleep drifts nearer. “Only yours.”

Chapter 40

Chapter Text

On the window of Merle’s office, to the right of his desk, is an old rainbow decal—a peeling sticker that casts pale, colourful blobs of light onto the papers littering the work surface. The room used to be a nurse’s office in a small playschool, and there is still, on one wall, a poster about nutrition. Daryl stares at the balanced meal illustrated in the faded cartoon and thinks of the dinners he and Merle used to eat as kids: bread, canned vienna sausages. Elsewhere in the building, someone sneezes, and there is a clatter of metal. Heavy footsteps approach down the hallway.

“Siddown.” Merle doesn’t pause when he reaches the doorway, but enters the office and flings himself into the desk chair. Daryl sits on a rickety wooden seat across from him. The older man has a peaco*ck blue bruise on one cheekbone, and he smells of toothpaste and tobacco. Daryl blinks at the unlikelihood of facing his brother across a desk, even one as makeshift and messy as this.

“You can thank me later for selectin’ you,” Merle says, surveying Daryl, his eyes lingering on the evidence of their fight. “‘S a cushy job.”

“Standin’ guard in the cold?” Daryl retorts. “Sure it is.”

Merle scowls. “That ain’t all, dumbass. Gives you access to the weapons cache—” Daryl rolls his eyes at the fancy phrasing, and Merle’s frown deepens—“an’ extra privileges.” He leans forward, his elbows on the desk. There is a defensive pride in his next words. “I gotta direct line to Aka.”

Daryl snorts. “So what?”

Merle laughs in response, shaking his head. “You’re a fool, li’l brother.” His smile fades suddenly, his expression mean. “Your lady’s smart enough to get it. Bet she’s got a good eye for power an’ influence.”

The mention of Carol makes Daryl bristle.

“Nosy f*cker, your boss,” the younger man says. Merle narrows his eyes. “Askin’ Carol questions ‘bout sh*t that ain’t his business.”

“Such as?”

Daryl reddens, regretting having mentioned it.

“Babies an’ stuff,” he mumbles. Merle gives a bark of laughter, and then taps his forefinger on the desk.

“Man lives for this community,” he tells Daryl. “Always thinkin’ ahead, always figurin’ how to keep things runnin’ smooth.” He sniffs. “Coulda been worse. Coulda asked what that mouth feels like on your dick.”

“Shut the f*ck up.” Daryl leans forward, his hands in fists, the urge to tip Merle’s desk onto him almost overwhelming. His brother watches, sneering, and adjusts his pants. For a second, there is a roar in Daryl’s ears. All weekend since he discovered her scars, Carol has struggled to face him, bundling herself into baggy layers of clothing and sleeping at the far edge of their bed. He imagines punching Merle in the throat, and some of his rage abates at the pleasure of the fantasy.

The older man sighs now, bored, apparently, with provoking his brother, and fingers the corner of a page on his desk. The rainbow decal turns his fingers yellow and green.

“Got a man gettin’ back this mornin’,” he says. “From checkin’ out some activity a li’l way inland.”

Daryl, who expected to be put on simple guard duty, frowns, and Merle co*cks his head to one side.

“Uh huh. You stick with me, you’ll get to see all the good sh*t. Check out whatever shipments come in.” He grins. His teeth are brownish, and he has lost an incisor since the quarry. “Get first dibs on luxuries.”

Daryl shrugs, biting at a thumbnail, impatient to get started on whatever Merle wants him to do. Carol is taking Sophia to see the school today, and Daryl cannot stop thinking of their faces, pale and anxious, as he left the apartment this morning. He should have tried harder these past couple of days to reach Carol. To draw her out again. But he didn’t have it in him after making so many demands of her on Friday night, after seeing her hide her face as he touched her burn marks.

“C’mon,” Merle says irritably, and stands up. “Gonna show you the weapons room an’ go wait up top.”

Daryl follows him out the office. The hallway is tiled with pale orange vinyl, sticky underfoot, a row of coat hooks set low along the wall—the right height for little kids. They pass the main entrance, double glass doors with an image of multiracial, multicultural children dancing across them, and then they arrive, abruptly, at a classroom. The door is open, voices coming from inside.

“Mornin’ boys,” Merle drawls as he enters. The men—three of them, Daryl sees as he draws level with his brother—return the greeting, addressing Merle asGeneral. “My brother, Daryl. Ronnie, Spike, Julius.”

The room contains three rows of tables reaching Daryl’s knees, and wooden pigeonholes line the wall below the windows. Every surface is covered with weapons and ammunition—mostly guns, but also a couple of crossbows, a stack of knives, and some riot gear.

“Spike here is in charge of the weapons room,” Merle says, gesturing at a stocky Asian with a tattoo of a skull on his throat. Daryl shakes hands with Spike and the other two guards: Ronnie, a tall man with a blue and white bandanna on his head, and Julius, a man with short, beaded dreads who studies him for a moment.

“Saw you in the truck the day you arrived,” Julius says. “Laid out in the back like a corpse. You made it, huh?”

Daryl nods.

“Thanks to Aka,” Merle says, shoving Daryl with an elbow. “Who’s out front today?”

“Me.” Julius slings a rifle over his shoulder.

“’Spectin’ Lee back this mornin’.” Merle fingers the holster at his waist, which already holds a pistol. “Gonna show my brother the ropes.”

xxxx

Leaving Sophia at the school, in a noisy crowd of children of varying ages, is like leaving her at her first day of school ever. The girl, her face pinched, waves stiffly as Carol departs, ushered out by a teacher murmuringit’s better to leave them here for a few hours than stay. Carl swept past them in a swirl of other boys when they arrived, but was gone again in seconds, chasing a soccer ball across the schoolyard. Carol isn’t sure whether the teacher she meets is the one actually responsible for Sophia’s class—the class divisions in general are unclear, the numbers in each age group skewed so that there are only a handful of children Sophia’s age.

The day is wintry, the sun buried in clouds, the air crisp and icy. Carol hesitates outside the school, looking towards the southern end of town, where Daryl is meeting with Merle this morning. In his absence, she feels restored to herself for the first time since Friday night; without his gaze on her, she can pretend he does not know the worst of what her body tries to hide. Again and again the last two days, Carol has remembered the shock of his mouth, his tongue licking and probing, and each time she begins to tremble, with horror and with something else she cannot articulate—something that makes her hungry to touch himback, to even out their vulnerability. She wishes she had not been so paralysed with fright when he held her buttocks apart to look at her. Wishes she had foreseen, as she knelt for him, where his desire would take him.

She is headed back towards the apartment blocks—not home, but to what she now knows is called the Vineyard, the white apartment block which houses orphaned children. The name seems to derive entirely from the stone vines around the entrance, but Carol learnt it from her neighbour, a woman named Chiara whom she met in the hallway yesterday afternoon. Slight, redheaded, of anxious demeanour, Chiara stopped Carol as she was heading back from the laundry room in the basem*nt.

“You’re new and the General says you can cook” was Chiara’s greeting. Carol, her arms full of shirts, took a moment to remember who the General was.

“I’m…Carol,” she said, smiling, and the other woman grimaced.

“Sorry—Chiara. I live across the hall from you.” She gestured towards her front door. “With my partner Catherine. We do shifts in the Vineyard.”

The committee responsible for the Vineyard, she explained, wanted to hire someone to run their kitchen. Cooking had been handled piecemeal, until now, by shift-working caregivers whose primary responsibility was supervising the children.

“It’s not working,” Chiara told Carol. Her face was long and narrow, with fine, rust-coloured freckles across her nose. “We’ve got kids of all ages and everyone expects everyone else to sort out the food and often meals end up just being sandwiches.” She dropped her voice, glancing furtively up the hallway. “Aka would be horrified if he knew the extent of it.”

Thus Carol finds herself on the steps of the Vineyard on Monday morning, listening to the sound of an infant crying from somewhere inside. She knocks, and when there is no answer, tries the handle and steps into a wooden-floored foyer. This building, she realises, must previously have been a hostel rather than an apartment block. There is no elevator or row of postboxes, but a hallway branching off the foyer, a staircase on her right and a large office on her left. At the foot of the stairs is a row of children’s shoes—clean indoor ones, she realises, tiny slip-ons and fluffy slippers and more than one pair of scuffed sneakers. Carol’s chest seizes for a moment.

“Carol.” Chiara emerges from the office. Her hair, shoulder length and dead straight, is held off her face by a plastic Alice band that looks faintly incongruous on a woman of middle age. “I’m so relieved to see you, we just got the week’s food delivered so you’ve arrived right on time.” She sighs loudly. “I’ll show you the kitchen.”

“I—I can’t actually stay today,” Carol says. “My daughter Sophia’s visiting the school for just a couple of hours. I’m fetching her in the middle of the morning.”

“Oh God.” Chiara takes a shuddering breath. “Okay, but you can start tomorrow? I’ve already cleared it with Human Resources.”

Carol shifts uncomfortably. “I…guess?” It’s not like she had an array of options for employment. This will suit her.

“Excellent.” Chiara marches past her and down the hallway. “Kitchen’s this way.”

xxxx

On top of one of the containers at the south end of town, sitting smoking in a deckchair next to Merle, Daryl feels briefly nostalgic for slow afternoons with his brother before the turn: sharpening bolts on the steps of their trailer while Merle drank beer, passing a smoke back and forth in a silence broken only by the buzzing of flies and the scrape of Daryl’s buck knife. The sentiment attached to those memories is superficial—frequently the brothers were rationing cigarettes because they were broke, and they bickered or fought almost as often as they sat in peace. But Daryl savours the chance to recapture the feeling, if only briefly. There is little to do, and when a walker lurches into the road from a dirt track between the fallow peanut fields, one of the men on the ground takes it out before Daryl has even moved.

An hour or so into their watch, a dust cloud appears in the distance, and Merle sits forward in his deck chair, lifting a pair of binoculars to his face.

“Lee,” he says as he lowers them, and gets up, jerking his head at Daryl. “C’mon.”

They descend via a stack of wooden crates behind the container. Some of the other men on watch are already clustered at the entrance, watching a beat-up black van approach, a familiar energy in the air, the anticipation of loot. The driver waves an arm out the window and honks the horn as he slows down. The men move to greet him, and Merle holds up a hand.

“Hang on. ‘Spectin’ kids.” He clears his throat and spits into the dirt. “Lemme sort them first. You know how they can be.”

Daryl remembers Sophia staring at him in the basem*nt, her eyes looking past him for someone—anyone—else, and he hangs back with the other guards. But Merle squints at him.

“Not you, dumbass.”

Lee, a blue-eyed, baby-faced blonde, is sliding open the van door when they reach him. The vehicle is packed with boxes and crates, so full that at first Daryl doesn’t even see the children. The van windows are blacked out, and the winter sunshine barely melts the edges of the darkness inside the vehicle. Lee doesn’t bother greeting the two men, but addresses Merle in a bored voice.

“Troublesome li’l f*ckers this time. Hadda secure ‘em to get ‘em in.”

Merle grunts, and something moves in the gloom of the van’s interior.

“Names? Ages?” Merle asks. Lee shrugs.

“Wouldn’ tell me sh*t.”

Daryl’s brother rubs his chin pensively and turns to Daryl.

“Go on then. Get ‘em out.” He smirks. “Sometimes they’re real relieved to be here an’ sometimes they’re mad as hell.”

Daryl stares at him for a second, aware of Lee’s pale, affectless gaze, and then crouches at the doorway to the van, inhaling the must of cardboard and the scent of onions from a sack on the floor in front of him. It takes his eyes a second to adjust before he can make out two small, huddled figures, the gleam of a frightened gaze.

“Hey,” he says gently. Behind him, Merle’s feet shift on the gravel. Lee is gone, his voice coming from a distance as he chats to the other guards. One of the kids sniffs, and Daryl glances back, scowling at Merle. He doesn’t know what the hell happened to their parents. Doesn’t know what’s likely to frighten them other than being sure he’s probably part of it. His brother snorts with laughter, and lights himself a cigarette.

“’S like a test,” Merle drawls. “’Fore you get this job.”

“How come they ain’t got a woman doin’ this?” Daryl hisses.

“Aka’s orders,” the older man replies. “Guess he’s got his reasons. No one but security sees ‘em till they’ve been cleared.”

“Cleared?”

Merle waves a hand irritably, smoke dissolving around his knuckles. “Health, whatever. Hurry the f*ck up, man.”

Daryl turns back to the van and leans forward. The fresh stink of urine hits him, stronger than the onions, and his heart turns over.

“Name’s Daryl,” he says roughly. “Ain’t gonna hurt you. You’re safe here. Jus’ gotta come out an’ let me—let someone take you to a—a nice man.”Jesus, I sound like a creepy f*ck, he thinks, frustration burning the back of his neck.

“Mama.” The voice, from the figure closest to him, is a girl’s. He swallows.

“What’s your name?” he asks, trying to sound casual and friendly. The child moves, and at last he can see her face, round and grubby, dark brown hair in a bob that stops above her jawline. There is dried snot under her nose, and she peers at him through glazed green eyes. She is barely out of toddlerhood.

“Mama,” she whispers.

“Sometimes you jus’ gotta drag ‘em out,” Merle remarks. Daryl ignores him.

“Your mama ain’t here, but there’s a lotta good, uh, good people here. Ladies. Kids too.” Daryl frowns. “You gotta sister there? Brother?”

“Brother.” The second child is older, his voice angry. “Leave heralone.” He moves closer to his sister, into the light. His hair is the same chestnut shade as hers, and there is a scratch across one of his cheeks. He is around eight, Daryl reckons.

“Can’t stay in here,” he says to the boy. “Ain’t you hungry? Needin’ clean clothes?”

The little girl’s eyes well up.

“I went potty in my pants,” she whispers.

“‘S okay. Ain’t gotta—cry, ain’t a big deal.” Daryl tries to imagine how Carol would handle the situation, which serves only to make him more aware of his own ineptitude. This girl, he thinks, would have been in Carol’s arms before she’d even spoken. “You—you hungry?”

They are very still, suddenly. The boy’s chin wobbles almost imperceptibly.

“We got food,” Daryl says as gently as he can manage. “Ain’t no one gonna hurt you.”

The little girl sniffles, a tear escaping, and looks at her brother. “Hungry.” Her face crumples. “An’ my pants are wet.”

“Fine,” the boy spits the word at Daryl. His voice rises to a high, uneven pitch as he continues. “But if anyone touches my sister I’ll fight them.”

“Yeah. ‘S fair.” Behind him, Merle snigg*rs, but Daryl feels nothing but pity for the child, for his obvious fear and his fierce courage. He reaches into the van, offering the girl a hand. Her fingers are cold, damp and soft, and she grips his thumb like a baby might, stumbling stiffly off the bench in the van. The movement pulls her brother with her because, Daryl now sees, they are cuffed together with a pair of police handcuffs, the metal thick and obscene on their skinny wrists. He shoots Merle a savage look.

“Lee’ll take ‘em off in a sec. Jesus. Calm down.” The older man flicks ash into the gravel and eyes the children as they emerge into daylight. “They go straight to Aka an’ he sorts ‘em. Quarantine an’ sh*t.”

The boy is clutching his sister’s hand despite the chain that connects their wrists. Their clothes are filthy, but the dirt looks fresh, not old, and they are not, as far as Daryl can tell, malnourished. Before Merle can usher them back towards the containers, Daryl crouches in front of them again.

“What’re your names?” he asks and tries to smile. The girl looks at her brother uncertainly.

“She’s Jenny. An’ I’m Will,” the boy says reluctantly, glaring at Daryl. The man nods.

“‘Kay. I’ll see you round, Will. Jenny. Once you’ve settled a bit.” He has no idea how long “quarantine” lasts for children or where he might find them once it is over, but he feels mildly frantic at the prospect of not being able to make sure they are okay after the fright of their arrival. When he is alone with Merle, he thinks, he will ask what their story is. What happened to their parents. And he will make sure he sees them again.

xxxx

Sophia’s two-hour school day is not a success. This much is clear as soon as Carol is let into the classroom and sees her daughter, who is sitting at a desk in the corner, head bent, knuckles white around the pencil in her hand. The ends of her hair nearest her mouth are dark and wet—she has been chewing it, an old habit from early childhood which she had outgrown in the last few years. When she lifts her head and sees her mother, she stands up instantly, and then sits down again, turning fearful eyes on the teacher.

“It’s okay,” Carol says, beckoning to her, not bothering to wait for the teacher’s go-ahead. Sophia obeys, whispering her thanks to the teacher and following Carol out with such obvious relief that Carol has tears in her eyes by the time they are outside the school, at the edge of the town square. She pulls her daughter into her arms, hugging her tightly.

“You smell like apples,” Sophia mumbles against her shoulder after a moment, and Carol laughs, swiping a hand across her eyes as she releases the child.

“I’ve been peeling them for applesauce,” she says. “At my new job.” She takes a breath. “How was your morning?”

There is a tightness around Sophia’s eyes as her gaze drops to her mother’s middle, and her voice is expressionless as she replies, “Fine.”

“Soph.” Carol tucks a damp-ended strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “You can tell me.”

“It was fine.” This time, there is steel in the words, though they are quiet, and Carol knows the child will give her no other answer. Sighing, she takes Sophia’s hand and starts walking towards the residential part of town.

“There are other options, sweetheart.” She thinks of Aka’s office, the bleep of the computer and Sophia’s smile, the kindness in the leader’s face. “Maybe tomorrow you can help me at work and we can talk about them.”

The child glances at her with a hope and relief that make Carol’s chest ache. She smiles brightly, and squeezes Sophia’s hand.

“I thought we could bake this afternoon. You and me. Have some fun.” She blinks, blaming an icy breeze for the moisture in her eyes. “Cookies or cupcakes, what do you say?”

xxxx

“Wait.”

He turns, his hair tousled, his shirt hanging from one hand. They have exchanged barely a handful of words since he got home, later than he’d hoped because Merle insisted he eat dinner with some of the men who take watch. The apartment smells of sugar and butter, and he badly wants to have a proper conversation—about school, about Will and Jenny, about the marks he saw on Carol three days ago—but his exhaustion is bone deep, and the words for everything feel too far off.

Carol unfolds herself from where she sits cross-legged on the bed, her face soft, tired, and comes to him. He is about to shower, to wash away a day of sweat and smoke and Merle, and he is suddenly self-conscious under Carol’s gaze, her eyes on his chest as she reaches him.

“You—” She stops, and lifts a graceful hand, hesitating before her fingertips stroke down the hard bone of his sternum. “You’re so—”

He flushes, gooseflesh rippling across his skin. He can count the larger scars on his chest without having to look down, knows the exact location of each one, the colours they turn in cold and heat. Carol’s fingers trail over a cigarette burn and her thumb brushes his nipple. His breath hitches. Her expression is dazed. She rubs the pad of her finger back and forth across his nipple and his co*ck throbs in response.

“Do you mind?” she whispers, meeting his eyes for a split second before she reddens, her touch faltering. He lifts his hand and stops hers before it drops from his skin.

“Don’ mind at all,” he replies roughly. Slowly, he releases her hand, and this time it stays on his chest, strokes across his pectoral and down towards his stomach, across a knife scar from a fight with his father, across an uneven gouge left by a belt buckle. She flattens her palm and hums quietly as she circles his bellybutton with a light fingertip. He is fully erect now, his co*ck straining against his fly.

“It’s okay to touch you like this?” she asks again. She is so close that he can feel her breath disturb the hair on his chest.

“Course it is,” he whispers. He rests a hand at her hip, looking down at her. She does not meet his eyes, but her other hand slides from his wrist to his bicep, cupping the muscle.

“You’re so strong,” she says softly, a crease between her brows. Her thumb skims across the belt buckle mark. “But so—” She stops, her throat catching. “Different to him.”

His stomach twists, but the sensation is replaced by a rush of want a second later as she leans forward and kisses his nipple. She lingers after the kiss, and then her lips close around the tiny nub and her tongue flicks it curiously, and his fingers tighten on her hip as he exhales sharply. It is the softest touch he has ever felt, that warm, gentle mouth, her lips sucking and then spreading around his nipple, and his pants are damp with precum. Unable to help himself, he threads his fingers through her hair and cradles her head, his hips jerking minutely as he imagines her mouth on his co*ck.

His touch seems to encourage her. She lays her hands on the bare skin over his ribs and nuzzles her way to his sternum, and then to his other nipple. Her breath heats and then cools his skin as she licks it, her breasts brushing him as she leans forward. He shifts the hand on her hip, trying to resist reaching down into her sweatpants and squeezing her ass, and his thumb brushes the skin of her back just beneath her shirt.

“Can I?” he asks raggedly, and slides his hand up a little, under the fabric. She lifts her head, eyes wide and dark.

“There are—more scars,” she says haltingly, and he shakes his head, bringing his hands to the buttons of her shirt and starting to slide them out.

“Want to feel you,” he murmurs. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and he can see her heart thudding under the skin as he undoes her top. “Want to taste you.” She makes a soft, anxious sound, and he pauses. “I love you.” He leans forward and inhales the scent of her hair, his mouth against her temple. “I love you.”

She nods, and he keeps his cheek pressed her curls while he fumbles with the last few buttons. As the shirt falls open between their bodies and the heat of her skin breathes into his, he grunts softly, his erection bumping her belly, and then he shifts away from her and slides the shirt off her shoulders as he does so.

He knows the exact line of her naked arms, her collarbone. He remembers from the river, from the night Ed beat her and dislocated her arm, from the sight of her kneeling in front of him. But he is allowed to stare at her now, to study the creamy white skin of her inner arms, the smattering of freckles across her shoulders, the gentle dip of her bellybutton. Her bra is pale blue—from Savannah Mall, he realises—and her breasts swell delicately above the lace edging, her nipples poking the fabric.

He does not have to ask and she does not wait for him to do it, but reaches back herself, her head bowed, and unclips her bra. He should savour the sight of her breasts after so long—small, high, plump and white—but instead he ducks his head, cupping one and bringing it to his mouth, moaning as he feels her nipple against his tongue. Her hands grip his shoulders as she gasps, and he hooks his arm around her waist, suckling, pushing his face into her flesh, marvelling at the softness of her breasts above the hard corrugation of her ribs.

He lifts his head when she whimpers, sliding his hands to cover her nipples, palming her breasts greedily. His hands conceal them completely. Her face is pink, her lips parted, and she whispers his name in a kind of panic, rasping and uncertain. Gentling his touch, he strokes the curves of her breasts, studies the rosy pink of her areolae, the darker shade of the centres, her skin warm beneath his thumbs. There are scars, as she warned him—the lines of a switch, cigarette burns just like his—but they swim out of focus after he notices them, leaving only a beauty, an abundance, of which he has dreamt.

He pinches her right nipple lightly, his co*ck twitching, and she whimpers again, her back arching as she pushes her breast into his hand. There is, on her face, a look of such anxious confusion that he forces himself to regain control of his desire, and draws her into his arms.‘S okay.The feeling of her naked chest against his, however, is maddening in an entirely new way, and his muscles tighten as he hovers at the edge of org*sm.

“It feels strange.” Her voice is full of tears, her face hidden in his neck. “When you—with your mouth.”

“Bad?” he asks guiltily, but she shakes her head.

“No,” she whispers. “Good.”

Gently, he trails his fingers over her back, the marks he remembers from the night he tended to her bruise. She leans against him, small and warm and soft. He wants to be inside her, to see her breasts as he thrusts into her, but when his hand reaches her lower back, the place where her burns extend a little way above her waistband, she stiffens, and he moves his fingers away again. She kisses his neck, a small, dry brush of her lips.

“Feel so good,” he breathes. She lifts her arms and loops them around his neck, her breasts lifting with them, rubbing across his skin, and he slides his hands up her ribs. His thumbs rest on the sides of her breasts, and she sighs, her hips flush with his, his erection trapped between them. Drawing circles on the tender skin, he draws back a little and ducks his head, taking the nipple he has not yet tasted into his mouth. She sways towards him, letting him go and covering her face this time as he licks slowly back and forth, and a whine escapes her when he starts to suckle, dragging at her nipple with his mouth. He holds her hips as they rock, as her body responds to his mouth, and then her hands drop to his shoulders.

“Stop,” she says, her voice unsteady. He pulls back, releasing her breast, and she bends her head and clings to him, hiding her expression, though her breath is a quick pant. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”

“Ain’t gotta do nothin’,” he murmurs. He has thought of her, from the start of their physical relationship, as the more experienced of the two of them. But this part of sex, he begins to understand—the pleasure of it—is unexplored territory for her. He hugs her, one arm across her shoulders, his other hand in her hair. “Been a long day. Here.” He bends and picks up her shirt, and he helps her ease one arm and then the other into her sleeves, buttoning the shirt for her as she wipes at her face.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice small.

“Uh uh.” He does the last button, and feels her fingers graze the front of his jeans, over his erection.

“I can—”

He steps back, holding her hand in his. “I’m gonna take a shower. Cold one.” He gives her a shy smile, and is relieved when she returns it despite her wet cheeks. “An’ then I’ll make some tea. ‘Kay?”

She nods, her fingers squeezing his. “Okay.”

He lets go of her hand and heads for the bathroom. As he goes inside, she says his name. He turns back. Her hair is a chaos of silver and white, her eyes as big as Sophia’s, her teeth catching her lower lip in a way that makes him wonder whether a cold shower will do the trick.

“Yeah?”

She blinks quickly, fingering the buttons he did up for her. “I love you too.”

Chapter 41

Chapter Text

He gets up in the middle of the night to pee, stands tiredly in the bathroom waiting for an erection to subside so he can empty his bladder. Carol is asleep on her back, her top pulled across her chest, and he woke with her fingers tucked beneath his shirt, resting on the bare skin of his stomach. He makes himself think grimly of Merle in the cold of the bathroom, sighing when he can finally relieve himself, and once he has washed his hands he goes to the kitchen, intending to eat another of Carol and Sophia’s cupcakes.

“Mama?”

He has only just flicked the light switch when the girl speaks, and it is clear even in that single, muffled word that she is crying. Leaving the light on, he goes to the threshold of her bedroom. The door is open, and in the ambient brightness from the kitchen, Sophia is a small lump under the comforter.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Where’s my mom?” Her voice is louder now, nearly distraught, and he goes into her room, squatting beside the bed. Her face is shiny with tears even in the gloom.

“Your momma’s sleepin’,” he tells her uncertainly. “But I can wake her, I’ll—”

“No.” A small hand shoots out from beneath the comforter and seizes his wrist, and Sophia’s eyes squeeze shut as she swallows a sob. “Don’t wake her.”

“Okay. I won’t. I won’t, Soph.” He pats her hand tentatively, but she doesn’t release his arm, and she turns her face into the pillow so the linen absorbs her tears. Dismayed, he softens his voice. “Hey now.”

He moves his free hand awkwardly to her shoulder, scrawny and rigid beneath the blanket, and rubs lightly at the muscle with his fingertips.

“Bad dream?” he asks, and she nods, her eyes still shut, her face contorted. “Wanna tell me?”

Her grip on his wrist is pincer-like for a second as she takes an unsteady breath, and then she shakes her head, opening her eyes to peer up at him. She looks afraid, as though he might resent her refusal to speak, and he frowns slightly, thumbs a tangle of hair off one salt-sticky cheek without thinking.

“‘Kay,” he says. Her gaze is clouded with misery, and he struggles not to look away. “You mind if I sit here a bit? Could use some company. Your momma’s snorin’.”

The child laughs, a damp, splintered sound, and he gives her a tiny smile. Slowly, without pulling his wrist out of her grasp, he turns and sits on the floor, his back against the nightstand, his shoulder against the mattress. He can sense Sophia’s gaze on his profile, and once he is as comfortable as he will get, he glances at her. In the few seconds that have passed, anxiety has eaten away any trace of amusem*nt on her face.

“Mama’s in her bed?” she whispers, her gaze flicking to the doorway. He nods.

“Yeah. You want me to get her?”

Again, she shakes her head. His wrist is growing numb where she clutches it.

“Is she okay?” Her voice is timid, wavering, and he begins to guess the substance of her dream. He leans his head back, still watching her, his temple aching against the edge of the nightstand.

“She’s good,” he tells the child quietly, and thinks of Carol lying sleepily in his arms talking about her day after they had tea last night. “She was real happy ‘bout bein’ able to bake with you.”

Sophia’s mouth pulls down at the corners. “Me too,” she whispers. Her hand shifts, turning on his wrist. Her fingers are cold. “Daryl, my—my daddy, is he—”

“Gone, Soph.” The word is louder than he intends. “For good. Ain’t ever hurtin’ you or your momma again.”

She closes her eyes, sniffing, and he covers her hand with his, trying to warm her icy knuckles.

“In my dream, in my dream—” She stops, exhaling audibly, thickly, language lost to whatever memory has taken her. His heart presses upwards, lodging at the base of his throat.

“Happens to me sometimes too,” he tells her when he can speak. “Dreamin’ like—like it’s real.” He watches tears spill across the bridge of her nose, wonders what is wrong with him that he cannot simply hug her, comfort her the way Carol might. “Ain’t a good feelin’.”

She blinks. Her lashes are clumped into wet spikes, her eyes bloodshot.

“Yeah,” she whispers. Her hand loosens a little on his wrist, and he slides his fingertips between her palm and his skin, curling his hand around her fingers and lifting them away, cradling them. On his wrist there are red marks where she has been gripping him. She gives a shuddering sigh, and they lapse into silence for a while. The floor of the bedroom is cold even through the worn rug, and the knobs of the nightstand drawers dig into Daryl’s spine. But he has no intention of moving.

He assumes she will go back to sleep, but when he glances at her after minutes have passed, she is watching him. Self-conscious suddenly about holding her hand, he looks away, his fingers spasming around hers, and she takes hold of his thumb as though she senses he is about to release her and wants to prevent it.

“Your momma says you’re goin’ to work with her tomorrow,” he says. Carol mentioned it briefly as she was drifting off. “School not great?”

There is a pause. He looks at her wrist, bony and freckled, where it sticks out from the cuff of her pyjamas.

“It was fine,” she tells him. Her voice is calmer now. He shuts his eyes briefly, struggling through his exhaustion to figure out how to scale this wall, so much like those Carol erects every time something hurts her. Turning his head, he meets the child’s gaze, studies her—her nose pink from crying, her hair mussed, her mouth the same delicate shape as her mother’s.

“You know what my job is?” he asks her slowly.

“Security,” she replies at once, huskily, and rubs her eyes with the back of one hand.

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “Just doin’ that ‘cause I gotta contribute.” He feels stupid, but it is too late to backtrack. “My real job is you an’ your momma. Worryin’ ‘bout you. Lookin’ out for you.” To his mortification, his voice wobbles, and he swallows convulsively. “Ain’t nothin’ more important than that.” He thinks again of the thickened skin of Carol’s burns, the warp and weft of colour and texture, the layers of agony trapped there.

“Me?” Sophia whispers, and he understands in a rush the weight of his own words, the extent of his responsibility towards this little girl who expects nothing from him. Something shifts in him, expands, hurts like brand new bone and muscle taking shape for the first time.

“Course, Soph,” he says softly, flushing. He cannot find the words to tell her more—or rather, they are there, but he cannot bring himself to say them. Her eyes shimmer, her face hopeful in a way that makes him feel wretchedly inadequate. He presses on. “‘S why it’s important for me to know ‘bout…school an’ sh*t. Stuff.”

Her face shutters, her gaze dropping, though she retains her grip on his thumb. Depleted, he waits, resting the back of his head against the edge of the nightstand, blinking dry, gritty eyes. He comes from a family that yelled more often than they spoke; all the wide expanse of middle ground between silence and violent fury was unfamiliar to him until he was older than Sophia is now, and he navigates none of it with ease. Frustrated, he inhales deeply, shifting to relieve the numbness settling into his legs, and finds himself thinking of the knife scar on the child’s ankle, its origins concealed from her mother all these years.

“Guess it sometimes feels like your job,” he says, groping his way through the words blindly. “To protect your momma.” He rolls his head to the side and looks at Sophia, who stares back. “Used to be that way with mine.”My angel my baby boy. “Couldn’ stop—couldn’ stop my daddy from doin’ what he did.” Daryl clears his throat. “What he did to her. But I never wanted her to be sad or—or worried ‘boutnothin’else.”

Sophia does not move. She seems barely to be breathing. He allows himself to consider, for a moment, what was it like for her sitting on that log in the woods, listening to Ed and Carol in the tent as she had listened to them for countless other nights. But his empathy for her is too raw, too immediate, memories of himself as a boy taking the place of imagination. He wipes a hand across his face, and Sophia speaks.

“She used to, to cry more if he was mean to me than when he hit her.” The words trip over each other, a flurry of frantic syllables. She releases his hand and nestles hers against her chest, her knees pulling up under the comforter as she tightens herself into a small, hard ball. He nods, his eyes pricking with tears. “And now he’s gone and she deserves to be happy.” Her voice swells with feeling, and Daryl knots his fingers together, afraid to touch her.

“So do you, Soph,” he says gently. “So do you.”

xxxx

Carol is awake at dawn, alone in bed. Daryl’s pillow is cold. She lies for a moment, listening for the sound of him elsewhere in the apartment, thinking of his hands and mouth on her breasts. But the place is silent, and the memory of his tongue on her nipples makes her restless and hot.

She gets up quickly and goes into the hallway, peering towards the living room in the haze of first light seeping beneath the curtain. As she shivers, the floorboards chilly underfoot, she hears a soft grunt from Sophia’s room. Frowning, she walks quietly along the hall and stops in the doorway, pressing a hand over her mouth when she sees Daryl. He is curled on the floor, hands tucked into his armpits, lying on his side facing the bed in which Sophia is sleeping. He has neither blanket nor pillow, the soles of his feet greyish with cold, one stiff shoulder rising and falling as he sleeps. Sophia’s left hand hangs off the side of the bed near his face. Carol does not need to ask what brought him here; she has tended to enough of her child’s nightmares.

He must sense her there, or perhaps that soft grunt was the start of wakefulness, because as she collects herself, he groans, rolling onto his back, bending his knees so his feet are flat on the floor. Above the waistband of his sweatpants, she can see the plane of his stomach, the broad musculature of his chest under the thin fabric of his shirt.

“Morning,” she murmurs, just loudly enough for him to hear her, and his eyes open, his head lifting from the floor to look at her. He winces, and sits up in a single, fluid movement, pushing his hair off his face.

“Mornin’,” he says roughly. “Sorry. Didn’ mean to—stay.”

She shakes her head, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb as she watches him get to his feet. Sophia sleeps on, and Daryl hesitates, lifting her limp hand and tucking it onto the mattress beside her before he comes to Carol.

“Don’t be sorry,” she whispers as he reaches her. “But you should’ve woken me.”

He bends and kisses her forehead but says nothing as he passes her and heads for the kitchen. She takes a last look at the sleeping girl and follows him, taking mugs down as he fills the kettle.

“Didn’ wanna wake you,” he says as he slides it onto the gas. Carol opens her mouth, and he glances at her. “Sophia didn’ wanna wake you.”

Carol presses her lips together, guilt pressing down on a bruise in her chest. Daryl scrubs at one eye with the heel of his hand, sighing, and comes to take the mugs from her. His fingers are careful, his skin warm.

“She’s jus’ like you,” he says, setting the cups on the counter and turning back to Carol. “Christ, so much like you.”

“She had a nightmare because of school?” Carol asks unevenly. It is only half a question. She already knows the answer. Daryl nods ruefully, his hip resting against the counter, and she looks down at his feet, the fine bones and long toes, the cuffs of his sweatpants. “I should’ve known, I should’ve got her to talk to me before—”

He draws her to his chest, the fingers of one hand threading through her curls, and she sags against him, wondering how long he lay on the floor beside her child. Salt burns the back of her throat, and his lips brush the crown of her head.

“She wouldna told you,” he says softly. “Hear me? Ain’t nothin’ you coulda said or done.”

“But—” she hiccups, and Daryl smooths the palm of his hand up and down her back.

“You an’ her so busy tryna look after each other you won’t let me do any of it.” His voice rumbles through her.

“It’s not your responsibility.”

He pulls back and looks down at her, his eyes bright.

“Yeah it is,” he says, with a conviction that startles her. “It is, Carol. ‘S the whole point of…this.” His hand leaves her hair, gestures to the small space between them. Carol hugs herself, gazing up at him worriedly.

“But she’s not—she’s not—”

A flicker of hurt flashes across his face.

“I know she ain’t mine.” His voice is hoarse. “But that don’t mean I don’t…it don’t mean she’s nothin’ to me.”

She leans into his embrace again, as much because she cannot bear to hold his gaze as because she needs to be held. He puts his arms around her slowly, and she rests her forehead against the side of his neck.

“I just take from you and take from you,” she whispers. Ed’s voice echoes the words,all you do is take an’ take, his knee hitting her stomach.

“Bullsh*t.” There is a note of frustration in Daryl’s voice. “Bullsh*t.” He exhales heavily, and her hair tickles her temple. “If you got—other reasons for not wantin’ me to do sh*t like that, like last night, then I get it.” His throat works, and she knows he is thinking of Ed, of what would have motivated him to enter his daughter’s bedroom at night. “But if you think it’s some kinda burden for me to talk with Soph, to sit with her, stop.”

Carol lifts her head and takes his face in her hands. Despite the force of his words, his expression is anxious. She stands on her toes and kisses him, more boldly than she has before, her mouth slipping open against his, her tongue darting across his lips. He tastes of sleep and salt, and his mouth is soft, allowing her to lead, though she feels him grow hard against her as her tongue slides against his. She shifts, restless once more, breathless with urgency for something she doesn’t know how to express, and Daryl moans into her mouth and breaks the kiss, dropping his head to her shoulder, panting as he rests his hands at her waist.

“I don’t deserve you,” she breathes.

“Nah,” he rasps. “You deserve someone better.”

She gives a small, helpless laugh, shaking her head, and he steps away from her, his face red.

“Weren’t nothin’ terrible that happened at school,” he says. “Was just a lot. Kids askin’ questions, bein’ the way kids are.”

His words bring her back to herself.

“I haven’t spoken to her yet, or—or you, but Aka…when I met with him, he suggested Sophia join the classes he teaches.”

“What classes?” Daryl frowns, and she shrugs.

“Special classes, he said. For the kids who don’t—fit in so easily.” She sighs. “I’m going to talk to her about it today.”

Daryl’s expression does not change.

“How many other kids?” he asks, an edge to his voice.

“I don’t know, Daryl.” Carol stares at him. “I’m trying to figure out what’s best for Sophia. I don’t—neither of us knows Aka well yet. But if we trust him enough to stay here, we’ve got to make the best of it.” She bites her lip. “For Sophia.”

xxxx

He leaves the apartment before the girl is awake, heading towards the abandoned gas station near the north end of Thomasville. In the stillness before most people wake, the town has a shabbiness that reminds him of his hometown, a faded dilapidation that makes it indistinguishable from hundreds of other tiny towns. Cracks divide the sidewalk into jagged, listing sections, and the gutters are lined with debris so old that it is featureless and brown. Here and there, the edge of an ancient soda can catches a sliver of light, or dirt settles in a pattern around the scalloped rim of a bottle cap. But those details make the place less distinctive, not more.

The RV is parked between the empty pumps and the gas station storefront, borrowing extra shelter from the roofing over both. Daryl’s heart lifts a little at the sight of the familiar curtains, the scuffed chrome of the mirrors. The door is open, as he knew it would be, and Dale is sitting on the steps stirring a mug of coffee. “Special dispensation”, Merle called it pompously when the old man said he had permission to stay in the RV, and although Daryl appreciates the comforts of the apartment, he envies Dale the familiarity of the campervan.

He lifts a hand in greeting as he crosses the forecourt, and Dale gets up, putting the mug down on the top step and coming over to clap him on the shoulder.

“Coffee?” he asks Daryl.

“Nah, already had. Thanks though.” The younger man shoves his hands into his pockets. “Just, uh, came by to say hey.”

“Andrea popped in yesterday,” Dale says. “I thought I might be lonely out here, but it doesn’t seem like that’ll be a problem. How’s Carol?”

“She’s good.” Daryl jerks his head towards the RV. “Mind if I smoke while you finish your coffee?”

“No, no, come.”

Dale leads him to the RV and perches on the steps again, gulping from his mug as Daryl lights a cigarette. Yesterday’s crisp cold has softened into a dense, damp chill, and Daryl’s fingers are slow and clumsy.

“Sophia started school?” the old man asks. Daryl bumps the toe of his boot against the raised concrete slab where the gas pumps stand.

“Visited,” he says shortly. “Probably gonna do this…other thing instead.” He takes a drag before continuing, the smoke warming him for a second. “Aka does classes for some kids.”

“Classes?” Dale raises an eyebrow when Daryl glances at him. The younger man shrugs.

“Guess it’s like school, just fewer kids. Special subjects, I dunno.”

“Huh.” Dale watches him thoughtfully, and Daryl looks away, conscious suddenly that he came here to gauge the old man’s opinion of Aka. Of this town. The only fully articulated view he has heard was from Rick and Lori, whose enthusiasm drowned out anyone else’s doubts. Dale hums quietly. “Sophia keen?”

“Doesn’t know yet,” Daryl mutters. He wishes for a moment that he had stayed at the apartment long enough to see her this morning. To make sure she was okay.

“You don’t like Aka.” The old man states it with quiet certainty. “Why not?”

Because he’s handsome and smart and seems to like Carol. Daryl flushes, scowling at his feet, watching smoke spiral in a tiny thread from the end of his cigarette.

“It’s not a trick question.” Dale chuckles, his mug scraping on the step as he sets it down. “I find him suspiciously—nicemyself.” Daryl glances at him and he shrugs. “Terribly sure of himself, like he’s got it all figured out. But maybe that’s why we need him. This place.”

“An’ this sh*t with the kids?”

Dale nods, taking a deep, contemplative breath. “It’s…unusual. But not so bizarre that you can’t see the logic in it. Like Lori said—” The slight, apologetic grimace as he quotes her makes Daryl snort softly. “—maybe as a, a scientist or whatever, he feels the burden of helping to…repopulate the planet.” Dale frowns. “I’m not putting that very well, but you know what I mean.”

Daryl grunts a reluctant affirmative, and squints at the other man.

“Coupla kids came in yesterday,” he says. A look of concern comes over Dale’s face. “One of Merle’s guys found ‘em. Parents dead, I guess.” He slides his eyes from the old man’s, ashamed for some reason he cannot put his finger on. “Little kids.”

Dale is silent for a moment, watching him, and when he speaks, he seems unsure of his words, as though he is assessing the truth in them as he forms them.

“For the best, I guess. They wouldn’t survive alone out there.”

Daryl nods quickly, taking a drag and closing his eyes as he exhales.

“They’re in quarantine,” he says. “But I’m gonna see ‘em once they’re cleared.” He looks at Dale, and away again. “Carol’s workin’ at the place they’ll live. The Vineyard.”

“Great,” the older man says. Daryl huffs out a sigh, dismissing the subject.

“You gotta job yet?” he asks. Dale smiles.

“You bet I do. Vehicle maintenance and repair. Told them I could do machinery too.” Dale nods in the direction of the town centre. “They’ve got a repair centre off the square in one of the alleyways. You should come by and take a look.” His gaze sharpens. “Things going well with you and Carol?” he asks curiously.

Daryl reddens, dropping the butt of his cigarette and grinding it out with his heel.

“Fine,” he mumbles. Dale chuckles.

“That’s good. That’s good, Daryl.”

xxxx

She sends Sophia back to the apartment with Rick after work. The sheriff’s deputy, who seems to be involved in some branch of Aka’s security, is passing the Vineyard as mother and daughter leave, and he is happy to have Sophia’s company for the rest of his short walk. Carol kisses the girl’s cheek and turns towards the centre of town. She is weary from standing all day, prepping vegetables and then cooking enormous pots of squash soup, and her fingernails are stained orange, her clothes smelling of wild garlic and parsley.

She met some of the kids today, although the number of them around after school was overwhelming, and she isn’t sure any of them will remember who she is tomorrow. Sophia smiled shyly at some of the younger ones, but hid behind Carol or in the pantry when groups of older kids clattered into the kitchen in search of snacks. She has been quieter than usual today, subdued after her restless night, although she brightened when Carol spoke to her about Aka’s classes.Can I try?she asked Carol anxiously.Is it okay if I try them?

The sky is deep purple beyond the town’s outline, the sunset a smear of gold and indigo between the buildings. As she crosses the square towards the clinic, Carol thinks of Daryl, the hardness of him against her belly in the kitchen this morning. Next time they have sex, will he remember the burns, catch sight of them, and be repulsed? He wanted her last night, his mouth needy on her breasts, but she had only her shirt off. She feels sick at the thought of his fingers hesitating between her buttocks as he felt the scars, the sensation of his hands easing her open so he could look at them.

“Carol.”

Her head jerks up at the sound of his voice, and for a second she is disoriented. He is standing at the entrance to the hospital, hands in his pockets, and as she reaches him, Merle appears in the doorway. Carol stops when she sees him, and Daryl, who was about to reach for her, rocks back on his feet.

“He’s on duty,” Merle says to Carol, smirking. “You wanna hook up with him you gotta do it durin’ lunch hour, sweetcheeks.”

She blushes. “I’m not—I didn’t—”

“Shuddup, Merle.” Daryl glares at his brother. “Said this was our last stop anyway.” He touches a hand to Carol’s forearm, sliding his fingers down to hers, and she smiles at him, weaving their hands together.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” she murmurs. Merle does not move, a glowering presence beside Daryl, his eyes inching up and down her body.

“Merle hadda speak to Aka.” Daryl angles himself in such a way as to obscure his brother’s view of her slightly, and Carol squeezes his fingers.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Can’t jus’ turn up an’ talk to him,” Merle drawls. “Like you’resomeone.” He raises his eyebrows. “You gotta follow the proper channels.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Carol replies. “And I—”

“A gathering of Dixons.” Aka’s voice, soft and rich as butter, slides between them, and all three turn to the door. He smiles at Carol, tucking a dark, stray curl behind his ear. He is wearing a chunky knitted sweater today, the wool creamy and thick and comforting in some fundamental way, and over it a black coat. “What can I do for you, Carol?”

Her colour deepens, and Daryl slides his hand from hers.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh, overstep. I can talk to you another time if that’s more appropriate.” She is paralysed with embarrassment. Merle grins at her.

“Not at all.” Aka moves closer to her, between the brothers, who stand aside automatically. He reaches for the hand Daryl released and holds it in both of his. His skin is cool, softer than Daryl’s, softer, she thinks, than hers. “Come. Let me walk you home and we can chat.”

She looks at Daryl uncertainly, but his face is stony, and he will not meet her eyes. As she moves off with Aka, she can hear Merle snigg*ring. She does not know how to incorporate Daryl into this conversation, or if that is even what he wants.I know she ain’t mine.

“I wanted to speak to you about Sophia,” she says as they cross the square. “About the classes you mentioned.”

Aka nods, a faint smile on his face, his hands in the pockets of his coat, and glances at her.

“She’d like to try them if the offer is still open. Please.” Carol can hear Daryl walking a few feet behind them, Merle at his side.

“Of course it is,” Aka says warmly. “And I’d love to have her.” He pauses, greeting a pair of men who pass them going in the opposite direction. “There are just five kids with me at present. Sophia will make six.”

“Thank you,” Carol says sincerely. “She visited the school, but it wasn’t—she didn’t—”

Aka stops walking. They are approaching the Vineyard, and the sky is sinking into fuller darkness, the last of the daylight drifting upwards. His gaze on Carol’s face is kind, and he puts his hands on her shoulders in an oddly paternal gesture.

“You don’t have to explain, Carol.” He slides his hands to her upper arms, squeezing them gently. “Children who come from abusive homes often find it very difficult to integrate with others in a social setting.” He drops his hands. Carol is aware of Daryl and Merle, stopped close enough that they can hear what Aka is saying, and, ridiculously, her eyes fill with tears. She ducks her head, nodding, and suddenly Daryl is beside her, his shoulder against hers, his hand settling at the small of her back. None of them speaks, and then Aka gives a light, easy laugh.

“Bring her to the clinic entrance tomorrow morning,” he says to Carol. “I look forward to working with her.”

He turns and leaves, nodding at Daryl, and Carol wipes furiously at her face, unable to lift her eyes from the sidewalk.

“Asshole,” Daryl mutters, shielding her with his body from the gaze of passersby, and she shakes her head.

“He was just telling the truth,” she says hoarsely. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m tired. Worried about Soph.”

“I know.” He pulls her against his chest, and she rests her head there, sighing, letting some of the tension drain from her. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Merle’s voice startles her into looking round, Daryl’s arm tightening across her shoulders. “Nice of you to invite me for dinner, brother.”

“I didn’—”

Carol silences Daryl with a hand against his sternum.

“We should,” she says softly, looking up at him, and smiles at his older brother. “I hope you like soup.”

Merle smirks. “Love soup. C’mon. Chance for me to get to know you some more, sweetcheeks. You an’ the kid.”

Chapter 42

Chapter Text

Merle stops in their entrance hall and unstraps his prosthetic, yanking it off his arm and laying it atop a small bookshelf that stands against the wall. Carol slips past him and meets Sophia as the girl comes to the doorway of the living room, her eyes wide.

“Merle’s come for dinner,” Carol says, giving her daughter a reassuring smile. Sophia wets her lips nervously, and then, unexpectedly, her face softens. Carol turns to find Daryl just behind her.

“Hey Soph,” he says. “Your day okay?”

The child nods, flushing a little.

“How was yours?” she asks earnestly, and Carol ducks her head to hide her smile.

“Was, uh, good. Thanks.”

“Hey girlie,” Merle says as he comes over to where they are standing. He bares his teeth in a smile. “Uncle Merle’s come to visit.”

Daryl glares at his brother and moves to Sophia’s side.

“Ain’t gotta call him that,” he mutters to her. The child lowers her eyes to the floor, folding her hands in front of her, and Carol feels an immense, familiar weariness soak into her limbs.

“Merle, let’s get you a drink,” she says brightly, and to her relief he follows her into the kitchen, leaving Daryl and Sophia alone in the living room. In the smaller space, Carol is more aware of Merle’s bulk, the scent of his tobacco, his body odour. He opens the small fridge, uninvited, with the toe of one boot, and rests his stump on top of the door as he contemplates the contents. The skin of what remains of his forearm is red and dry, angry welts where the prosthesis has rubbed, a fresh blister glistening on the fading imprint of a buckle.

“Wanna touch it, sweetheart?”

Startled, mortified, Carol lifts her eyes to Merle’s. He is sneering at her, his voice heavy with sarcasm, but there is a flash of something else in his pale blue gaze—hurt, perhaps. Mortification of his own.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “That was rude of me.”

His lips twitch, but he doesn’t reply, shifting his attention back to the fridge. The back of his neck is ruddy.

“We don’t have beer, unfortunately.” She tries not to look at his arm again. “But I can offer you coffee or…” She bends in front of him and lifts a bottle out the door, peering at the label. “Elderflower cordial. I didn’t check what it was when I unpacked our food.”

She glances at him as she straightens up, and his gaze has darkened, his mouth pulling into a smirk as he looks at her hips. She steps away from him, conscious of the knife at her waist, her hand dropping to the sheath in a gesture he does not miss. He gives a low whistle, shaking his head, and chuckles.

“Mouse grew some sharp teeth,” he says. “Calm your tit*. I’m a man who appreciates the feminine form, darlin’. Doesn’ mean I want my brother’s leftovers.”

Her fingers brush the handle of the knife, and she swallows. From the living room, she can hear the low murmur of Daryl’s voice, the sound of Sophia’s soft laughter.I killed a man just like you, she thinks.

“I’m nobody’s leftovers,” she says to Merle, cursing the tremble in her voice. “How about I won’t stare at you and you don’t stare at me?”

He squints at her, faint surprise in his expression, and then shrugs, slamming the fridge door and making her jump.

“Coffee,” he says. “Nice an’ sweet.”

He does not leave the kitchen as she returns the cordial to the fridge and fills the kettle, but leans against the counter, waiting. His scrutiny of her continues unabashed, and she turns to him, annoyed, once she has set coffee cups on the counter.

“Are you using anything on your arm?” she asks. “To relieve the itching?”

His face hardens, his jaw jutting forward. She turns pink, but holds his gaze, lifting her chin. Slowly, deliberately, he rubs his stump over his crotch, narrowing his eyes and exhaling in obvious pleasure.

“Good scratch now an’ then helps,” he says as her colour deepens. “You offerin’?”

She doesn’t reply for a moment, remembering Ed, remembering a thousand moments where he stood in front of her and palmed his co*ck, anticipating what he was about to do. Her mouth goes dry, her hands jerking on the cups so that they rattle against the counter. By the time she speaks, it feels like hours have passed, but Merle hasn’t moved.

“I have ointment you can use,” she says. Her voice catches and then settles. “You should see if someone can adjust your prosthetic hand so it fits better.”

He turns away from her then, looking towards the kitchen door, his stump sliding across his thigh to hang loosely at his side.

“So my brother saved your li’l girl,” he says. Bewildered by the change in topic, Carol stares at him, and his gaze flicks to hers for a second. “Wasn’ him who told me. The old man did. Dale.” He snorts derisively. “Singin’ Darylina’s praises like he knew my brother better than me.”

“He did save her. Daryl.” She looks down at the cups, reaches slowly for the coffee canister. “He searched for her until he found her, and he brought her back.”

“Hero sh*t, eh?” There is envy in Merle’s voice along with the mockery, and she rests her hand on the lid of the canister and turns her head to look at him.

“Yes,” she replies. Merle chuckles, a humourless, bitter sound. “No one else bothered. Only him. He risked his life for Sophia.”

“Bet I know why,” Merle drawls. “You been f*ckin’ him since back then? Before your husband…passed away?” The words are laced with venom. Carol pushes down the shame, the guilt, the memory of Ed’s face as he died, and makes herself smile at Merle.

“No, Merle. Back then we barely knew each other.” She co*cks her head to one side. “He did it because he’s a good man. A kind one.” She purses her lips for a second. “Guess that’s hard for some people to understand.”

xxxx

He stays with Sophia because he wants to put her at ease, to reassure her that he will not let Merle near her. But as he sits with her in the living room, listening to the sound of Carol’s voice and his brother’s, he is quietly frantic with the need to intervene in their conversation, even without knowing its substance. He knows Merle, knows him like he’s a part of Daryl, an extension of his flesh and muscle. He knows, with absolute certainty, that Merle would like both to f*ck Carol and to be rid of her, to separate her from Daryl so that the brothers are ateamagain, Daryl trotting at Merle’s heels waiting for orders. Leaving his older brother alone with her for even the shortest time feels risky.

When they come to the living room, a tray of coffee in Carol’s hands, the air between them is bristling with tension, and Merle shoots Daryl a look filled with hostility. Carol puts the tray down, and leaves, pausing in the doorway.

“I’ll heat up the soup,” she murmurs, and gives her daughter a smile, gone from the room before Daryl can catch her eye. Merle slumps in an armchair, legs spread wide, and takes a long drink of coffee before fixing his gaze on Sophia.

“Look like your momma,” he says shortly. “‘S lucky. Your daddy was an ugly piece of sh*t.”

Sophia, sharing a couch with Daryl, shifts nearer to him, her arm brushing his. Daryl thinks of her hand on his wrist last night, and bumps her shoulder with his gently.

“Watch your language,” he snaps at Merle, who laughs.

“I ain’t wrong,” the older man says. “Am I, girlie?”

Sophia looks at Daryl uncertainly and leans against his arm. Merle shrugs, rubbing his stump absently against the arm of his chair, and then frowning as he glances down at the rash across his skin.

“Is it sore?”

Both men look at Sophia in surprise, and she turns crimson.

“Sorry,” she whispers, her eyes damp as she meets Daryl’s gaze, her hands plucking anxiously at the hem of her sweater. Daryl turns to his brother to forestall whatever withering remark he is going to make, but Merle is looking at the child curiously.

“Yeah. Sometimes.” His voice, though not exactly soft, has lost some of its roughness. Sophia scrunches her nose in sympathy, and Daryl watches, transfixed, as his brother rolls his shoulders back, his chest puffing out.

“Cut it off myself,” the older man says, eyeing the child to watch her reaction. Sophia nods, her brow creased. Merle seems pleased. “Weren’t nothin’ at the end of the day. Man does what he’s gotta do to survive.”

Daryl rolls his eyes, but it fails to dislodge Merle’s smirk as he looks at Sophia. He leans forward.

“Sometimes,” he tells her. “Feels like my hand is still there. Like I can move my fingers an’ everythin’.” He raises his eyebrows and is clearly satisfied with the expression on the child’s face, leaning back with a smug air that irritates Daryl.

“Gonna scare her,” he snaps at Merle. But Sophia shifts at his side.

“I‘m not scared,” she says. Merle grins at his brother. Daryl glances down at the girl. She moves so she can take her knife out the sheath at her waist and show it to Merle. “I’ve got a knife. Daryl got it for me.”

“Did he now.” Merle squints at the dainty blade in her hand. “He teach you how to use it too?”

Sophia nods, and Daryl feels a flicker of pride. Merle looks at him briefly, and then smiles at the girl.

“You know, I taught him everythin’ he knows ‘bout knives an’ that crossbow of his. When we was kids.”

“Bullsh—no you didn’,” Daryl protests. Merle ignores him.

“You ever want some lessons with a real fighter, you let me know, girlie.”

Sophia’s fingers fold around the handle of the knife, and she glances up at Daryl, unsure of the right answer. He pushes aside his resentment of Merle and smiles at her, and her face clears.

“Thank you,” she says politely to the older man, and he nods with a magnanimous air. As she replaces the knife in its sheath, Carol comes into the living room, a jar in her hand, and holds it out to Merle.

“This should help,” she says flatly. She has withdrawn; whatever Merle said to her in the kitchen has got her guard up, and she moves and speaks in the slow, careful manner Daryl associates with Ed’s presence. Merle takes the jar and stares at it for a second before looking up at Carol. She flushes, taking it back from him.

“Sorry,” she says tightly. “I didn’t think.”

She opens the jar and hesitates, and Daryl starts to speak. But she is already dipping her fingers into the ointment, and Merle is holding up his stump, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“‘Preciate it,” he drawls. “This kinda sh*t can be tricky with one hand.”

“Hey.” It is all Daryl can manage to say, his voice full of indignation, his face flaming. Carol is already smoothing the cream into his brother’s skin, her fingers gliding across the dry, peeling rash and the welts, across the ridges and scars. Merle sits motionless, unable in the moment even to gloat, apparently, his eyes on her hand as it massages his forearm. Daryl does not need to look to know that his brother is aroused, and he can hardly blame him. But Carol, frowning with concentration, seems oblivious to both of them, scooping more ointment onto Merle’s arm, using both hands to spread it now, to stroke the length of Merle’s exposed skin. Daryl wants to seize her wrist, pull her away, lay some obvious claim to her. Instead, he sits seething beside Sophia, unable to avert his gaze until Carol picks up the lid and closes the jar.

“There,” she says briskly, and puts the jar on the coffee table in front of Merle. “Take it with you and get someone to apply it every evening.”

Someone? Daryl can hear it as clearly as if Merle has spoken it aloud, but his brother has said nothing. His stump rests in his lap, his eyes on Carol as she goes to sit on the empty couch opposite Daryl and Sophia.

“Thanks.” Merle slurs the word as though he hasn’t spoken for hours. Carol looks quickly at him, perhaps doubting his sincerity, before nodding an acknowledgement.

“You’re welcome.” She meets Daryl’s gaze for the first time since she entered the room, and her expression is suddenly confused and then apologetic, her hands twisting together in her lap. Sophia stiffens, her eyes on her mother, and Daryl struggles to regain control of himself, to set aside the image of Carol’s hands on his brother. He holds her gaze, and though he cannot make himself smile, he gives a little, sheepish shake of his head. Merle laughs, dry and quiet, the skin of his forearm gleaming in the lamplight.

xxxx

He is waiting for her when she comes to their room from putting Sophia to bed, his hands shaking as he cradles her face and kisses her—shaking not with nerves, she knows at once, but with the effort of holding back. He kisses her searchingly, his tongue tracing her palate, his lips sliding across hers, and when he feels her respond, the kiss deepens, becomes fiercer. His hands move to her neck, her shoulders, her waist, and then he is fumbling with her button and zipper. She pushes her jeans down, leaving her panties on, but his hands reach for the elastic of her underwear and drag it to her thighs before he pulls her against him and grasps her ass cheeks, squeezing them, sucking and nipping at the curve of her neck.

“Daryl,” she breathes, and in response he moves his mouth to the base of her throat, undoes enough buttons that he can pull her shirt over her head. She shivers.

“Want you,” he says, his voice grating and dark. “Wanna see you. Taste you.”

She is afraid, as she always is, for a second, and he lifts his head, his hands easing their grip, stroking over the round of her ass as he looks down at her.

“Please,” he rasps. His fingertips brush the cleft between her buttocks, drifting downwards.

“The—the scars, Daryl, you don’t have to—”

He slips his fingertips between her buttocks, and she sways forward, her forehead bumping his collarbone, as he strokes the ruined skin.

“Wantyou,” he repeats, and she believes him, caught between the press of his erection and the eager movement of his fingers.

“Okay,” she murmurs, and he is still, suddenly.

“I love you,” he whispers, and she nods, her face against his throat.

She takes her bra off, lets her panties drop to the floor and steps out of them while Daryl undresses. It is the first time they have been naked together, and she stands with shoulders hunched once she is ready, her arms covering her breasts. Daryl, his cheeks red, faces her, his hands in fists at his sides, and the courage with which he allows her to look at him, at the marks on his chest and sides, makes her ashamed of her reticence. Slowly, she lowers her arms, and he grunts, his co*ck jerking, drawing her gaze to it. His hips are narrow, and the curve of his erection, the head purple and slick with precum, is intimidatingly thick and long.

“Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he says hoarsely, his eyes lingering on her breasts, dropping to the curls between her thighs. Her nipples are pebbled with both cold and trepidation. A spasm crosses Daryl’s face as his gaze returns to hers, undisguised worship in his eyes before he looks away. “I’m not—I’m not—Carol.”

He covers his face with his hands, his shoulders lifting as he inhales, and she forgets her self-consciousness and goes to him, taking hold of his wrists and tugging his hands down. He looks at her helplessly, his breath a soft whine as he skims his fingers down the sides of her breasts, over her ribs and the curve of her hips.

“So f*ckin’ perfect,” he whispers, and there is a note of despair in his voice.

He takes her hand in his and leads her to the bed, settling at her side as she lies down on her back. She can feel his co*ck against her thigh, the leak of fluid from his tip, but she keeps her eyes on his face, her heart thudding, her skin cold and her muscles rigid. He bends and kisses her softly, and at the same time he fits his hand to her mound, his middle fingertip resting on the seam of her labia, its pressure light but insistent.

She clings to his biceps, bracing herself, her breath fluttering in her throat. He does not stop kissing her, his tongue flicking across her lips. His finger moves up and down that seam, tracing its length right down to where the burns begin. He is gentle, and when he starts to separate her labia, he does so shallowly at first, probing carefully, working them open until his finger dips into the folds between them. Carol clutches him, breaking their kiss, and he watches her face as his finger finds her entrance, nestling against it without penetrating her. Her breasts rise and fall with each quick breath, her thigh muscles hard as stone on either side of his wrist. His finger, damp now, drifts upwards to her cl*t.

“Spread your legs for me,” he whispers, his eyes heavy-lidded. Stiffly, she moves her thighs apart, gooseflesh rippling up them, Daryl’s finger still stroking, exploring, moving again and again along the edges of her folds, down to the soft skin below her entrance, over the hood of her cl*tor*s. She cannot seem to ease her grasp on his arms, cannot look away from his face. She remembers the heat of the lighter before the flame touched her skin, remembers how Ed threatened to put it inside her.

She flinches when Daryl pushes himself into a seated position, and he leans down and kisses her again, hungrily, possessively, his hands cupping her breasts as he thumbs her nipples. She watches him as he moves between her legs, his erection bouncing with the movement. He caresses her inner thighs, urging them further apart, murmuring encouragement to her as she obeys.Not Ed he’s not Ed. She reaches a hand towards him as she parts her legs, and he leans forward and nuzzles the pulse point below her jaw, catches her bottom lip and sucks at it softly, his fingers slipping between hers. His co*ck bumps her mound.

“Wanna look at your puss*,” he whispers against her mouth. “Put my fingers in you. Wanna taste you. That okay?”

She nods, anxious tears pricking her eyes, and he sits back, stroking her hips, her stomach, running his thumbs along the creases of her thighs, down to her ass. Before he touches her between her legs, he waits for her to meet his gaze, and for a moment the desire in his expression is sweet and pleading. She smiles at him, her chin wobbling, and tilts her hips.

He inhales sharply as he uses his fingers to spread her labia, so wide that she can feel air enter her, so wide that she blushes and turns her head to the side, embarrassed to imagine what he is seeing. For a long moment, he stares down at her, and then she feels his thumb at her opening, pushing bluntly. She whimpers as her body admits it, and Daryl grunts, turning his finger as he works it deeper, his other hand resting warm and soothing on her abdomen. Her back arches off the bed, her muscles taut with the anticipation of pain; but there is only a slight burn, and her body clenching on his knuckle. He turns it in her, moaning, draws his thumb out and pushes it back in, his other hand holding the base of his co*ck now, his mouth slack with need as he drags his gaze to her breasts and then her face. He watches her as he moves his thumb again, deeper, crooking it, and she feels her nipples harden, her head tipping back as her walls ripple around his finger.

Light as air, a fingertip brushes across her cl*tor*s. Inside her, Daryl’s thumb is bent, stretching her, though he does not move it as he strokes her cl*t. At first, she is too tense to feel anything except the pressure of his knuckle inside her, but gradually, as she stops fearing pain, the ticklish caress of his fingertip starts to send a faint current through her, her thighs twitching, her fingers curling into the comforter. Heat spreads outwards from that bundle of nerves as it hardens beneath his touch, finds its way to where his thumb caresses her walls, melts the resistance in her muscles. As she sighs, wanting to move, to increase the feeling, his touch disappears, his thumb twisting its way out of her. She rolls her hips in frustration, chasing that slow, electric sensation.

His breath is hot as he bends between her legs, his thumbs opening her again, and when his tongue slides into her, the tip curling against her ridges, she cries out. The sound is weak and desperate, a yearning for something just out of reach. His tongue is softer, less demanding than his thumb, his mouth sucking at her folds, his teeth grazing her cl*t, and she writhes as he licks her insides, as he flicks his tongue out of her and down to the opening below. His hands slide under her ass, cupping it, and he runs his tongue through her folds, licks the curls on her mound, suckles at her cl*t until there is a rush of heat inside her and she is begging him incoherently,please please please. He dips his tongue inside her once more, humming in surprise as he does so, and then he pulls back and his thumb notches at her entrance, pushing into her. Both of them exclaim as his knuckle opens her, because this time the movement is slick and easy.Not blood, she thinks,but want, and her throat aches as he turns his thumb, an open-mouthed moan breaking from him, his movements frantic for a second as he thrusts his finger into the slick trickling from inside her.

He moves up her body, his thumb pumping in and out of her, his mouth trailing across her stomach to her breasts, where he kisses and bites her gently, latching onto her nipples as his hips jerk against the sheet. He replaces his thumb with two long fingers, plunging them into her, moving them in and out as his mouth closes on the soft skin of her throat, sucking with a bruising force. The sound of his fingers f*cking her is wet and loud, and she is hot, sweating and trembling as he works a third finger into her, his gaze burning black on hers as her body takes it. She makes soft mewling sounds as he spreads his knuckles inside her, readying her for his co*ck, his fingers coated so thickly with her slick that she can feel it on the webbing of his hand outside her body. His thumb finds her cl*t as he pushes his fingers deeper, and when he circles it, the skin slippery with her fluid, she cries out again, her nails digging into his shoulders. He moans through gritted teeth, his thumb flicking back and forth as his fingers drag at her walls, and she gives a sobbing wail as he pushes her past this moment, past the bed and her body and the smell of his skin, past the scars and the flame and the memories of Ed. She dissolves around his fingers even as her walls clamp down and suck them deeper, her vision whiting out, pleasure jolting through her in violent, clumsy bursts that build and build until she is thrumming with it. Dimly, she hears the squelch of Daryl’s fingers hammering into her, hears him say her name again and again,good girl oh yes oh f*ck I can feel you. But she is unmoored, shuddering and whimpering in the shelter of his chest, her hands scrabbling at the sheets, her hips rising and falling, rising and falling, until she is boneless and weak, twitching as her body pulses around the thick cluster of fingers still inside her.

“God.” Daryl’s mouth is against her brow, his lips moving in the perspiration there, his hand still deep inside her. “Jesus, Carol.”

She gives a quiet, bewildered sob as his thumb glides across her cl*t again, and slowly, carefully, he withdraws his fingers from her. She aches inside, feels stretched wide, and his fingertips examine the gape they have left, stroking the skin around her entrance. His head is heavy against hers, his breath hot.

“I’ve never—felt that.” Her voice cracks. She reaches up and combs her fingers into his hair, holding him close to her, afraid he will move away and leave her in pieces. His arms close around her, crushing her against him, the scent of his sweat gamey and strong. He is still hard, his co*ck squeezed between them.

“You okay?” he asks, his voice scraping in her ear. She laughs, although it sounds more like she is crying, and nods. He runs his hand down her spine, cups her ass, his co*ck jerking against her. She leans back to look at him, stroking his side, flushing as she reaches the hard curve of his ass and caresses it lightly. His nostrils flare, and he kisses her hungrily, rolling her onto her back so he is above her, flexing his buttocks as she scrapes her nails across them. He breaks the kiss and looks down at her, his face dark, his mouth pulling down at the corners.

“Hey,” she whispers in concern, cupping his cheek. His eyes shimmer, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his gaze so raw and intense that it feels more intimate than any of the ways he has touched her. Abruptly, he rolls off her, and rests a hand at her hip.

“Turn over.” His voice is rough. She reaches up once more and brushes her fingers along his cheekbone. He bites his lip, his eyes on her mouth. She wants to look at him as he slides into her, as he moves in her, as she learns how her body can welcome him. She wants to hold him as he comes. But she understands that he is overwhelmed, and that he wants to feel like he isn’t.

“I know what you need,” she whispers, echoing the words she said the first time he f*cked her, and he hisses out a breath as she rolls onto her belly for him.

He kneels between her legs, urging her thighs apart, her knees up and open, and the head of his co*ck nudges her entrance, burning hot and so much bigger than his fingers. She presses her cheek into the mattress, and his hands grip her ass as he pushes his tip into her. She is sensitive from her org*sm, her body tightening around the head of his co*ck, and he grunts as he pushes deeper, pulling her ass cheeks apart until her anus twitches and contracts. His thumb, damp and warm, bumps against her hole, rests there, teasing it, distracting her from his girth, from the ache inside her as he hits her limit. His passage into her, for all its eagerness, is different to every other time he has entered her. Her body is wet and ready, the rub of his shaft somewhere inside her sending tremors of pleasure through her, her walls clinging to him with a softness, a need, she has never felt. Once he is seated in her fully, he pauses, his thumb circling the melted skin around her hole, brushing across it as it clenches, pushing lightly down until the muscle gives enough to suck at his fingertip, and she lets out a quiet whimper.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, thinking of the ugliness of that part of her body.

“Wanna put my tongue there.” His voice is so low it is barely audible. His thumb tickles the tight muscle. “Wanna taste every part of you.”

He takes his hand away, then, as grief and gratitude swell inside her, and he starts to move. She knows he initiated sex because of Merle, and she feels his claim on her now, in his long, hard thrusts, in the way he grasps her ass tightly. She gives herself over to it, the thud of his body against hers, the sticky heat on her thighs, and as he moves faster, he curls his fingers under her hips and hoists them so her ass is raised, finishing with a shout, filling her as his co*ck spasms in the clasp of her walls.

He collapses onto her, his hands finding hers on the pillow and holding them as he pants against the back of her neck. He is shaking with something more than his org*sm, a convulsive trembling that again makes her wish she was on her back below him, holding him, and he presses his face into her shoulder, his hands squeezing hers.

“It’s okay,” she whispers.

He takes an unsteady breath, moving off her, his release spilling from her as he does. She turns quickly, drawing him into her embrace, locking her arms around him as his head settles on her chest. He rests a hand on her breast, panting, and as the minutes pass, his fingers start to stroke tiny circles on her skin. She waits until he has caught his breath.

“What happened?” she asks gently. His fingers cease their movement for a second, and she isn’t sure he will answer her.

“Scares me.” His voice is shy, the words effortful.

“What does?”

“What I feel,” he replies. “When I’m...” He trails off into silence, and she kisses his hairline wordlessly, hugging him closer. “Want you so bad I’m scared I’ll hurt you. Like him. Love you so bad I can hardly—I dunno how to—”

“Daryl,” she whispers, and rests her cheek against his hair. “You’re not like him. You never will be. And I’m not the same person with you as I was with him.”

He peers up at her.

“I know,” he says softly. “Still.”

She closes her eyes, kissing his brow once more, and he shifts upwards, seeking her mouth with his. Both of them spent, this kiss is not about desire, or laying claim to each other. It is sweet and slow, a muted give and take that it feels like they have only just learnt. Carol can taste herself on his lips and tongue, and she smiles against his mouth. But when Daryl pulls back, his face is grave.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he whispers. “Please.”

Her brow creases, and she searches his face, sees the depth of his fear. She blinks as her eyes fill.

“Never,” she whispers back. “Never ever.”

Chapter 43

Chapter Text

The playschool that serves as a security centre has a dingy kitchen at one end of the hallway. That most of the guards are single men is clear from the state of the place, the sink piled high with dirty coffee cups, the counter gritty with spilt sugar and grounds, a family of roaches scuttling undisturbed up and down the wall from behind the broken fridge. The building is without power, the kettle boiled on a gas camping stove that stands beside the sink, and the kitchen reminds Daryl of the places he’s lived with Merle—rundown, filthy, dishes stacked until the younger man caved and washed them. All that’s missing are beer cans and empty pizza boxes, the smell of grease and cold pepperoni.

The morning after dinner with Merle, Daryl is at work early, poking around the centre to get his bearings without his brother at his back. The weapons room is securely locked, and so he ends up in the kitchen, contemplating coffee but too disgusted by the state of the place to make it. Instead, he finds an ancient, stained sponge in a cupboard under the sink, an inch of dishwashing liquid in a bottle, and begins, absently, to wash up.

He has been distracted by thoughts of Carol since he left the apartment this morning. In the early hours, unable to sleep, he woke her by taking her nipple in his mouth and suckling, his hand moulded to her other breast, kneading it. In the darkness, it was easy to shift himself between her thighs, brace himself above her and look down at her: her features were vague in the gloom, her eyes a gleam that came and went. He rubbed her labia apart with his tip, pushing into her in three sharp thrusts. She was sticky from their earlier lovemaking, though not wet, and she gasped as his co*ck dragged at her walls, as he gazed at the white column of her throat, the movement of her breasts with each jerk of his hips. Reaching down, he eased her legs up, his hands on her shins, felt himself bottom out against soft resistance as she arched her back. It took him barely any time to come, sunk into her heat, glancing down to see her puss* cling to his length as he withdrew.

She came around his fingers afterwards, his skin coated with cum, her body clutching at his frantically as he thumbed her cl*t, her hands clawing at his shoulders. And then she wept, the first tears on her cheeks even before she had stopped shaking. She curled against him, her face hot, and sobbed in silent, heaving sobs, inconsolable. She offered no explanation, and he did not ask, his eyes stinging, his fingers in her hair.I love you, he told her.I love you.

When he woke this morning before first light, his skin smelling of her and his co*ck hard again, she had already showered and dressed. He does not know all the memories of Ed she carries in her body, and likely never will; he senses, when the subject comes up, that she is trying to spare him the knowledge. Neither does he know how to tell her that she stupefies him, that the thought of looking into her eyes as he enters her, as he moves in her, makes him panicky. He had replayed her org*sms in his mind a hundred times by the time he reached work, the soft, helpless sounds she made as she trembled, the grip of her walls on his hand, the waves of tension and release through her muscles as she lost herself in pleasure.I’ve never felt that before.

Footsteps approach the kitchen, and Daryl blinks, staring down into the cold, sudsy water in which his hands lie motionless, a mug forgotten between them. Groping for the sponge, he glances over his shoulder as Lee appears in the doorway, his blonde hair damp. He smirks at the sight of Daryl at the sink.

“Gonna shine my shoes next?” he asks. Daryl squints at him and turns back to the dishwater, clunking a mug onto the dish rack.

“Those kids you brought back,” he says. “Brother an’ sister. They outta quarantine yet?”

Lee’s boots squeak on the linoleum as he comes to stand beside Daryl, opening the kettle and holding it under the faucet. His arm rests against the other man’s as he leans across him. The blonde smells peculiar, sweet and cloying, a scent Daryl recognises but can’t identify as he pulls his arm away, stepping out of Lee’s way.

“Damned if I know.” Lee puts the kettle on the gas stove and takes a lighter from his pocket. “Told you. Aka deals with that sh*t. I just deliver the goods.”

Daryl stares at him. “The goods?”

The other man laughs, flicking the lighter as the gas hisses. A blue flame flares and recedes, licking at the underside of the kettle, and Lee moves so Daryl can stand at the sink again.

“The goods. Kids. Food. Guns. Whatever.” He shrugs. “All the same to me. Kids’re just harder to get in the goddamn van.”

Daryl turns to the dishes and doesn’t reply. The desiccated corpse of a moth floats out of the second mug he drops into the water. Behind him, Lee cracks his knuckles one by one, each delicate pop making Daryl’s skin crawl.

“Musta been somethin’,” Lee says as a wisp of steam rises from the spout of the kettle. “Growin’ up with Merle.”

Daryl grunts, reaching for another mug. The blonde says nothing for a moment.Pop.

“I had sisters. Two of ‘em, older than me.” He sniffs. “You have any sisters?”

“Nah.”

“Huh.” The coffee canister, a dented tin with a rust-rimmed lid, scrapes across the counter, startling Daryl into looking around. Lee smiles. His eyelashes are blonde, the blue of his eyes so pale they are almost milky. “Just you an’ Merle then?”

Daryl nods.

“Least you still got him,” Lee says. “Dot an’ Peggy got bit the first week after it started.” He is still smiling, his tone so nonchalant that offering condolences would feel like an overreaction. Daryl frowns, ducking his head in an indecipherable gesture as he turns away from the other man. He does not like standing with his back to him, and is relieved when the blonde moves into his periphery, dumping the coffee can beside the gas stove.

“You gotta kid, right? A girl.”

Daryl glances at him sharply, a teaspoon slipping from his fingers and sinking into the dirty dishwater. Lee considers him expressionlessly, waiting for an answer. When none is forthcoming, the blonde co*cks his head to one side.

“Merle said.” He grins suddenly. “Said you went an’ got yourself a whole damn family. Took a wife an’ kid off some asshole.” His laughter is a lilting arpeggio. Daryl lifts his hands from the water, flicking droplets off his fingers before he wipes them on his jeans.

“That ain’t what happened,” he says. The blonde’s mention of Carol and Sophia has awakened a violence in him that he hasn’t felt since Ed died. Lee chuckles again, unfazed by the hostility in Daryl’s voice, and shrugs.

“Don’t matter. Tickled me, is all. Law of the jungle sh*t.”

“That ain’t. What. Happened,” Daryl repeats quietly. The heel of one hand rests on the handle of his knife, an automatic gesture, a thoughtless one. Lee’s face is suddenly blank, his gaze impenetrable.

“Take it easy.” It is not a plea, but a threat—Daryl feels it as plainly as if the blonde had held a blade to his throat. He leans towards Lee, narrowing his eyes.

“Don’t talk about sh*t you don’t understand then,” he says.

The lid of the kettle rattles as the water reaches the boil, startling both men. Lee takes a mug off the dishrack, his scent enveloping Daryl once more, and as Daryl leaves the kitchen, he realises what it is, that smell: baby shampoo, sweet and fresh and faintly sickening.

xxxx

Once they reach the hospital, Sophia is as nervous about classes with Aka as she was about school, and though she tries to hide it from Carol, her narrow, squared shoulders and white face are more than enough to betray her. The two of them climb the stairs to Aka’s office alone, but when they reach the landing, there are voices and laughter coming from inside his office, the door standing ajar. Carol knocks tentatively. When there is no reply—doubtless because no one has heard the knock—she pushes the door open.

Four faces turn to look at her from the couches and beanbags, and a boy sitting at the computer pauses a game and stands up, looking eagerly past Carol at her daughter. He is Sophia’s age, maybe a little older, tall and extremely skinny, his hair a thick, untamed shock of deep auburn, the colour Carol’s once was.

“Hi,” he says. There is something poignant about his eagerness, the way his gangling form strains towards the threshold where Carol and Sophia stand. “I’m Walt.” He waves a hand at the group sprawled near the bookshelf. He is missing three fingers. “Rudy, Grace, Luca, Allan.”

The other kids murmur a greeting. The only girl, her hair in crooked straw-coloured pigtails, gets up from the rug and smiles shyly.Grace. She is younger than Sophia, dressed in dungarees embroidered with flowers, an oddly anachronistic outfit that reminds Carol of her own childhood wardrobe.

“This is Sophia,” Carol says. “And I’m Carol.”

“Aka said we should get to know you,” Walt replies. His expression is earnest, his nose too large for a long, freckled face, the bones close to the surface. There is faint reddish fluff on his upper lip. “He’s checking on the quarantined patients.”

Carol rests an encouraging hand on Sophia’s back, and frowns slightly. “The new kids in quarantine? My—partner mentioned them.”

Walt rubs the stumps of his missing fingers against the side of his leg, and shakes his head. “No, the hospital patients who are too sick to be treated with, uh, with others.” His brow creases. “Like, they might infect other people? Aka treats them himself.” He notices Carol’s puzzled expression and flushes slightly. “There are just a few,” he adds hastily, and hesitates before continuing, with more confidence, “Thomasville is fortunate to have the means to treat even the gravely ill.”

The words sound practised, a sentence handed to the boy whole. Carol smooths her expression.

“That’s wonderful,” she replies. Sophia shifts at her side. The girl has not yet spoken a word, and when Carol glances at her she realises the child is waiting for her to leave. Startled, she gives her daughter’s hand a quick squeeze.

“I’ll see you later,” she says. Sophia nods. “I’ll come find you this afternoon, or you can find me at the Vineyard.”

“Okay, mama.” There is a faint note of impatience in the words. Carol blinks, unused to any measure of independence in her daughter. Perhaps, she thinks, small classes with this motley crew of kids will be just what Sophia needs.

She closes the door behind her as she leaves, and stands listening for a moment in the hallway, her fingertips resting on the wood above the doorhandle. The clatter of boots on the stairs rouses her as Aka descends from the floor above, smiling when he notices her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you and Sophia,” he says as he reaches the landing, slightly out of breath. He smells of disinfectant and some rich cologne, and his smile is warmly apologetic.

“Not at all,” Carol replies. “Walt and—the others gave us a, a lovely welcome.”

“Good.” Aka studies her for a second. “I’ll keep a particular eye on Sophia today, don’t worry. The kids spend a fair bit of time in independent study of one sort or another while I take care of other things, but I’m always nearby. Guiding them.”

“Thank you.” Under his gaze, she touches a hand to her face self-consciously. She did not sleep enough last night, and cried so hard, in the early hours, that she has dark smudges under her eyes. Aka lifts his chin thoughtfully.

“Daryl,” he says. “I’ve been wondering. Is he very much like Merle? I haven’t had an opportunity to chat to him yet.”

“No,” Carol replies immediately. “He isn’t. He’s—different.”

“Hmm.” The dark-haired man nods. “Well, I hope you’re both settling in well.” He reaches for the doorhandle, and she steps out of the way, inclining her head in farewell as he gives her another wide smile.

She bumps into Lori downstairs, notices the deputy’s wife in the waiting room as she heads for the exit. Carol stops, sticking her head into the room.

“Hey,” she says softly. Lori sees her and gets up, coming over with a hand fitted to the hard curve of her belly. “Everything okay?”

The brunette nods. “Just a check-up,” she says. Her face is bright, the careworn appearance she has had for months gone. “A blood test, I think.” She seems to notice Carol’s face for the first time, and her smile fades. “Are you okay? Are you here because you’re sick?”

“Oh no. No, I’m fine. Sophia’s taking classes with Aka.” Carol waves a hand, embarrassed suddenly. “An easier adjustment for her than a—a whole school. Just a few kids.”

“Right.” Lori frowns, but then shrugs and glances at the receptionist. “Anyway.” She looks back at Carol. “Where are you working, by the way?”

“The Vineyard.” At Lori’s puzzled expression, Carol gestures with her chin in the vague direction of the north end of town. “The—the orphanage, I guess. I’m managing their kitchen.” She blushes. “Cooking. I’m cooking.”

“Oh that’s nice.” Lori eyes her with what feels like condescension.

“What about you?” Carol asks.

“I’m not working.” The brunette tugs her top so it pulls tight over her belly. “Maternity leave or whatever you want to call it.” She laughs. “Aka says I should just focus on having a healthy baby.”

“That’s great,” Carol says sincerely. “It’s been a long time since there was much opportunity for rest.”

Lori nods. “And with Rick going to work every day like—before, it’s really—” A flicker of uncertainty crosses her face. “—it’s just easier, you know? Having some time to myself.”

Carol nods slowly, and Lori’s voice drops.

“He’s on some new security detail with Shane.” She gives a small sigh. “I’m not sure it’s the best idea, the two of them working together, but they do make a good team when they aren’t—when Shane isn’t—”

Sleeping with you?Carol thinks, and instantly dismisses the uncharitable thought.

“I’m sure they’ll work well together,” she says reassuringly. “What’s the new detail?”

Lori shrugs disinterestedly. “Town patrol or something. You know, keeping an eye on the citizens rather than keeping out strangers.” She glances at the receptionist again. “I better go, they’re going to call me any minute now.” Smiling at Carol, she pulls her into a brief hug and says, with genuine regret, “It’s strange not living with the group anymore. I kinda miss it.”

“I know what you mean,” Carol replies. She hasn’t seen Andrea since their group dinner, and has wished more than once she could have a quick chat with her friend. “But the privacy is good for us all, I think.”

Outside, a fine drizzle has started, blurring the glass doors and clinging to Carol’s curls as she starts her walk across the square. Somewhere nearby, Daryl is on watch. She misses him, misses the hollow his body makes for hers when he holds her, the whisper of his voice into her hair. The pleasure she found with him last night unlocked something in her, a furious sorrow for all the years she was married to Ed, for the way he taught her her body was to be used. She cannot articulate it to Daryl; she is afraid of frightening him away, of compounding the guilt and confusion he already feels about his desire for her. And though she does not entirely understand it, she knows that sleeping with her is different, in some profound way, to sleeping with the other women he has known. Harder, she thinks guiltily, her eyes on the stones of the square. More complicated, no matter how much she wants it to be easy.

xxxx

At lunchtime, relieved from helping Spike catalogue the armory, Daryl walks over to the Vineyard. He tells himself it is not because of Merle’s remark to Carol yesterday about a lunch-hour hookup, but as he nears the white building, he is thinking of her, wet and tight around his co*ck, her hands fisted in the comforter, her ass supple and giving in his grasp. He stops outside the front door and breathes slowly until his co*ck calms down, then pushes the door open and goes inside.

The kitchen is easy to find by following the smell of cookies baking, and no one stops him as he heads up the hallway. Carol is rolling out dough, her sleeves pushed up and her face flushed with the heat of the oven, and she is not alone. Sitting at the long wooden table in the centre of the room is Jenny, the little girl Lee brought back, watching Carol work the dough in her fingers.

“Hey.” Daryl leans a shoulder against the doorframe, one corner of his mouth lifting in a smile as Carol looks up and sees him. Her face, drawn and preoccupied, softens, and she smiles back at him. Her gaze shifts almost immediately to the child with her.

“This is Daryl,” Carol says gently, gesturing towards him with a flour-dusted hand. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“We’ve met,” Daryl says, meeting the girl’s eyes as she stares at him. There is a dullness to her expression that wasn’t there yesterday, and she neither smiles nor speaks to him. He looks at Carol. “She came in with her brother the other day. The ones I told you ‘bout.”

He crosses to the end of the table, watching to see if the girl is afraid of him. When she doesn’t move, he goes to Carol, kissing her cheek, lingering for a second to inhale the citrus and sugar scent of her.

“Hi,” she murmurs, and his co*ck twitches despite the child’s presence, his hand resting for a second in the dip of Carol’s lower back. She does not look at him, but her chest turns slowly red above the collar of her shirt, and he has to move away and sit down in one of the chairs before his erection becomes noticeable. He clears his throat, startling Jenny, and grimaces in apology.

“Your brother round here too?” he asks. “Uh, Will?”

The little girl looks down at the dough Carol has given her to play with, which lies untouched on the edge of the table, and her chin wobbles. Daryl looks up at Carol, frowning, and she shakes her head slightly.

“Jenny arrived about an hour ago,” she says. “Chiara asked if she could sit with me for a while.”

“But where’s—” Daryl stops, turns back to Jenny. “Where’s your brother?”

A tear drips into the dough, leaving a shining streak as it runs down to the tabletop.

“Daryl.” Carol’s voice is soft, without reproach, but the back of his neck burns. “She came out of quarantine alone.”

He frowns, kicking restlessly at a chair leg, leaning back and lifting a thumb to his mouth so he can worry the nail with his teeth. Perhaps Will is still in quarantine; perhaps he will arrive here later. He had no visible injuries except for the scratch on his face. Daryl’s blood runs cold as he remembers it. Even a scratch from a walker could be enough to make him sick. To turn him.

Carol is watching Daryl with concern, a ball of dough between the palms of her hands.

“Sorry,” he says abruptly, his eyes flicking to the child and then away. Her tears remind him of Sophia in that dank basem*nt, crying on a moth-eaten couch while he sat helplessly beside her. “You, uh, you had a busy mornin’?”

Carol considers him, her eyes limpid blue, her lips the same rosy pink that her nipples were last night. He looks away.

“Not really,” she says. “Mixing cookies and making a casserole for the kids’ dinner.”

“God, sorry, I didn’t mean to leave her for so long.” Chiara, whom Daryl has met only briefly in the lobby of the apartment block, rushes in. “Come, Jenny. Let’s go and see your room.”

The little girl looks fearfully at Carol, who gives her a reassuring smile.

“You can pop in and visit me any time you want,” Carol says. “Come and tell me what your new room is like later on.”

Chiara takes the child’s hand and urges her off her chair, leading her to the kitchen door.

“Thanks, Carol.” The woman glances at Daryl as though noticing him for the first time, raising an eyebrow in acknowledgement before disappearing down the hallway.

Carol sighs, putting down the dough in her hands, and Daryl gets to his feet, going to her side.

“Poor kid,” she says. “So shellshocked she hasn’t said a word.”

“Spoke with her the day she came in,” he says. “Wonder what the hell happened to her brother.”

Carol looks down. “Maybe he’d been—infected,” she says. “Before they found him out there.”

Daryl hums.

“Yeah. Maybe.” He brushes the back of Carol’s hand with his fingertips, and she looks at him. “Sorry I upset her.”

Her brow furrowed, she shakes her head, and he slides his fingers between hers. Her skin is sticky with dough, her hand half the size of his.

“You get a break over lunch?” he asks, unable, now that he is so close to her, to resist. Her wrist jerks beneath his.

“I don’t really know,” she replies softly. “But yesterday Soph and I took half an hour to eat.”

She insists on washing her hands before they slip out the Vineyard, her fingers damp in his as he leads her up the road to their block. They do not speak on the stairs or in the hallway, and as soon as the door of the apartment closes behind him, he backs her up against the wall beside the bookshelf and kisses her. Out of breath, she pants into his mouth as his tongue darts across her lower lip, and he fumbles with his belt buckle, grunting as he undoes his fly and his co*ck is freed. She is soft against him, pliant, her hands reaching between them to draw him out his boxers, the chill of her skin sending a shiver through him. She uses both hands to stroke him as he kisses her harder, the back of her head pressed against the wall, his fingers on the sides of her neck as she lifts her face to his. His thumbs stroke her jaw, and her hands tighten on his shaft, the pulse in her throat fluttering.

She looks momentarily stricken when he grasps her wrists and takes her hands off his co*ck, but he bites his lip, reddening, and muttersGettin’ close alreadyas he undoes her pants. Her expression melts into tenderness, her fingers combing through his hair. Her lips are swollen from kissing him, her face so full of love that his chest closes as he gazes down at her. He shuts his eyes, rests his forehead against the wall above her shoulder, and pushes her pants down enough that he can work a hand into the front. Coarse hair scratches his fingers, warm, damp flesh parting as he scrabbles further, blindly, and she rises on her toes, whimpering, when his index finger finds her inner folds.

“Please,” she whispers, fear in her voice, and he freezes, turning his mouth to her ear.

“Not gonna hurt you.” He uses the back of his wrist to shove her pants lower, to reduce the pressure between his hand and her puss*, and she shivers, both hands in his hair, gripping the strands in a hold that is almost painful. “Okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”

She is rigid with tension as he pulls himself free of her grasp, her thigh muscles taut as he kneels in front of her. His hands stroke up her inner thighs and urge them apart, and then he cups her ass, tilting her hips towards him so he can lick from the bottom to the top of her labia, using the flat of his tongue to ease them open. She tastes salty and sour, but her opening is tangy when he spears his tongue inside her, her walls just starting to grow wet.

Her fingers rest on his shoulders, plucking at his shirt in constant, fretful motion, her head tipped back and her mouth open. There is nothing particularly skilled about his exploration of her: his mouth does what he wants to do with both his fingers and his co*ck, reaching inside her, pressing back against the soft swell of her insides. His thumbs hold her labia apart, and when his tongue can go no further, he sucks at her folds, flicking her ridges until the tip of his tongue finds a rough spot inside her and she shudders, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He finds the spot again, eagerly, and her hips buck against his face, her buttocks clenching as she breathesoh god there. She is growing wetter, her slick trickling into his mouth, and he swallows it hungrily as he caresses her walls with his tongue.

Her org*sm comes quickly, her hands reaching for the back of his head as she cries out, her hips thrusting erratically as he tries to keep her from bruising his nose with her pubic bone. He hums as she closes around his tongue, and slips one of his hands forward, pushing a finger into her, pumping it as she spasms, pulling his head back so he can look up at her as she whimpers.

He is lightheaded for a moment when he stands up, his movements clumsy as he closes his hands on her waist and turns her to face the wall. She sags against it, and he reaches down and finds her entrance, uses two fingers to open it up for the head of his co*ck. She moans, her cheek flattened to the plaster, her eyes closed, and he thrusts into her in a single movement, lifting her onto her toes with the force of it, pinning her between his body and the wall.

She is wet enough that his strokes are easy even though they are quick, both he and Carol grunting as he pounds into her, his hands on her hips. Her walls convulse around his length from time to time, as though he is wringing the last of her org*sm from her, and he looks down as he comes, tugging her hips back, watching the base of his co*ck pulse as he spurts into her. Sweat gleams in the hollow where the cleft of her buttocks begins. He pulls them apart, withdrawing from her, dribbling the last of his cum over her scarred skin. She makes a wordless, anxious sound, and he rubs the tip of his co*ck up and down through the hot fluid, until her skin is shiny with it, until the tension drains from her again and she rolls her head so her brow rests against the wall, her breathing rapid. With his fingers, he catches the cum leaking from her and pushes it into her, drags some of it back and strokes the uneven pink and white of the burns, uses the tip of his little finger to tease the furled, damaged muscle.

“Daryl,” she says, her voice ragged and nervous, and he bends and kisses her spine, his other hand reaching under her shirt to her belly, encouraging her to move lower, away from the wall, until her palms are spread on the plaster and her ass juts out. She hangs her head, and he finds her cl*t with his thumb, his fingers still resting on her belly, his other hand between her ass cheeks. If he could, he would f*ck her again immediately, but his co*ck is softening even as his hunger for her seems to peak.

Her second org*sm is gentler, a gradual, quiet climax as he strokes her cl*t and nestles his little finger against her anus. He hears the wet, faint sound of her walls contracting around the cum still inside her, a shiver passing through her limbs, and as she moans, he breaches her with his fingertip, nudging it past her ring and into an astonishing, sucking heat. Cursing, he pushes harder, until his finger sinks right down to the knuckle and Carol’s nails scrape the wall as she makes a soft, surprised sound. He keeps working her cl*tor*s, his finger unmoving in her, his body hunched over hers. He can feel ripples of pleasure still passing through her, can feel her hole try to close around his finger with each shudder.

As she grows still, her hands relaxed against the wall, she starts to slide down, her knees buckling, her palms slipping down the plaster. An arm around her waist, his finger inside her, he drops with her, lowering her carefully onto her hands and knees. As her head sinks to the floor, her eyes closed, he begins to work his finger free, easing it from her slowly, staring at the deep pink inside her as the muscle winks closed behind his fingertip. She exhales, shivering, lifting her head slowly from the floor, and he sits with his back against the wall, drawing her into his lap. The air of the hallway is cold, perspiration drying on their skin, and Carol huddles against his chest, her knees pulled up.

“Talk to me,” he says hoarsely. The spell of her body broken, he is afraid of what he did. She doesn’t reply, but kisses his neck, just below his ear, lightly. “Carol? Did he—did he do that? To you?”

She goes very still. “Yes,” she whispers. “But not like that, not—not gently.” She looks at him until he meets her eyes. Her gaze is steady.

“I’m doin’ everythin’ wrong,” he says, his eyes burning. “Should be doin’ it different.”

“No. No.” She sits up straighter, ducking her head so she can peer at him beneath his fringe. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”

He shakes his head miserably, hugging her to him, so wretched that they might just have had a fight instead of making love. Carol rests a hand over his heart and takes a deep breath.

“I understand,” she says. “I get it. And it’s hard for me too, the—the closeness.” She blinks, dropping her gaze, her thumb moving against the fabric of his shirt. “But for me the hard part is—is letting you see me. My…body.” There is distaste in her voice, and he shifts, about to object. But she continues before he can. “The thing that makes it easier for me is remembering that it’s you touching me. Not him.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “You inside me.” Colour creeps up her throat to her cheeks. “And for you, I think—it seems like that’s the hard part. Being reminded that it’s me.” The word catches in her throat, and she swallows.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is strangled, his shame so immense that he cannot find even a single word to explain himself. But Carol lifts her hand to his face and turns it towards her.

“You don’t have to be sorry. I get it.” Her mouth pulls into a sad half smile. “It’s a—a lot all at once.”

“I love you,” he says, the words scraping across his palate. “An’ I dunno how to—how to look at you an’ be inside you an’ love you all at once without…without…”

“I know,” she whispers, and slides her hand from his face, tucking her head into the curve of his neck. “And that’s okay. That’s okay, Daryl.”

Chapter 44

Chapter Text

“…and then we just sat and talked for an hour, about all kinds of things, about philosophy and medicine and ho—homeopathy.” Sophia pauses for breath, and Daryl exhales a small cloud of condensation. “He really listens to us. Chris. Like our ideas are…like what we say matters.”

“Chris? You mean Aka?” Daryl tries to keep his voice neutral. Sophia nods, doing a little skip to keep up with his long strides across the square.

“He said we should call him by his first name.”

Daryl glances at the girl. Her cheeks are pink with cold, her eyes bright. Her first week under Aka’s tutelage has, by her report, been a wild success. Daryl should be happier about it than he is; he can feel Carol’s relief, has noticed the change in her sleep patterns and the frequency with which she smiles. But his own sleep is troubled, dreams he can’t remember leaving him unsettled for hours after waking.

It is his day off today, the first time he has walked Sophia to school—a midweek break for him thanks to the occasional night shifts he has been doing. Winter is nearly here, and he has spent hours perched in the dark on the containers while the metal breathes ice around him. He walks a section of the perimeter from time to time to keep warm, but there are guards at such regular intervals along the outskirts of the town that patrolling is hardly necessary. Mostly, he smokes and sharpens his bolts, watching the pale ribbon of dirt road below him, wondering whether Carol is sleeping.

Sophia moves quicker as they approach the hospital entrance, matching Daryl’s pace and moving slightly ahead of him. She is wearing one of Carol’s thick sweaters, too big for her but not by much, not anymore, and Daryl feels a strange pang seeing it on her.

“What are you going to do today?” the girl asks as they stop outside the entrance. Despite her eagerness to get to class, her face is earnest and attentive as she waits for his reply. He shrugs.

“Hunt, maybe.” He has been itching to get outside the town. “Dunno really.” He gestures towards the doors with his chin. “You better go.”

She flashes him a smile and is gone, through the doors and up the stairs in a clatter of footsteps. Daryl reaches into his pocket for a box of cigarettes, tapping one out and feeling with his other hand for his lighter.

“Morning.”

He lifts his head, his fingers closing on the lighter. Aka, in a black wool coat with the collar turned up, smiles at him, one leather-gloved hand pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he watches Daryl light the cigarette. Daryl plucks it from his mouth, shoving the box back into his pocket, squinting through the first faint drift of smoke.

“Mornin’.”

“You brought Sophia?” Aka’s voice is mellow, his manner relaxed, the natural superiority in his air so entrenched that it barely registers to most people. Men like him existed in a world entirely foreign to Daryl before the outbreak, a world of money and education and social ease.

“Uh huh.” Daryl takes a drag, his fingers nervous on the cigarette, one foot tapping restlessly. “Got, uh, gotta question for you.”

Aka raises one dark eyebrow, but his friendly expression does not otherwise change. “Oh? About Sophia?”

Daryl shakes his head, glancing around them. On the head of the statue in the centre of the square, a pigeon flaps its wings fussily before folding them away. Beyond the town, beyond the scruffy fields and abandoned warehouses, the woods begin, trees bristling on the ridge from which Daryl first laid eyes on Thomasville. He turns back to the man in front of him.

“‘Bout one of the kids who came in the other day. The boy. Will.”

Aka studies Daryl thoughtfully.

“We haven’t had a chance to talk since you moved in,” he says at last. “Get to know each other. Perhaps now is a good time to do that?”

xxxx

She is mixing muffins and thinking about Daryl when Walt shuffles into the kitchen of the Vineyard, thinking about how she tried to take Daryl’s co*ck in her mouth last night and he pulled away, shaking his head, tugging her up so he could kiss her instead. She remembered, then, what he saw Ed do the night he dislocated her shoulder, remembers Daryl’s anger, his remorse for not having intervened, and she was freshly humiliated. She wants totry, to see if she can replace her memories of Ed with better ones, to discover what it is like to touch and taste a man who doesn’t choke and spit on her. But she is afraid that what Daryl remembers has made him utterly resistant to the idea.

She didn’t know, until this moment, that Walt lived at the Vineyard. She has met about half the kids, mostly the younger ones who like to wander into the kitchen hoping to sample her cookie dough, or simply because they have news and need a captive audience. The older kids keep to themselves more, and their hours at the residence fall largely outside of hers.

The boy, however, does not seem surprised by her presence in the kitchen; he must have known she worked here. His coarsely textured hair is standing straight up, flattened on one side, and the edges of his nostrils are an angry red, his face chalky. He is dressed in what must be sleepwear: ancient sweats that leave his bony ankles exposed, and a greying men’s hoodie decorated with the Olympic rings.Salt Lake City 2002.

“I didn’t know you lived here,” Carol blurts out. Walt lifts a hand—the one with all five fingers—in greeting, and gives her a half-hearted smile.

“Guess I should’ve come and said hi.” His voice is deep, but his baritone sounds unreliable, as though he is still settling into puberty. Carol shakes her head, smiling.

“Not at all. You aren’t going to classes today?”

He comes to the table and drops into the chair opposite where she stands mixing, rubbing his nose with the back of one broad, dry-knuckled hand.

“Gotta cold,” he replies miserably. Up close, she can see how watery his eyes are, how chapped his lips, and she wonders whether anyone has time to coddle and comfort a boy his age in a home full of children who need attention. She scoops dough into the pans in front of her quickly as she replies.

“Have you had breakfast?”

He shakes his head.

“I’ll make you something,” she tells him. “Let me just get these in the oven.”

The boy watches her as she finishes scooping dough, loads the muffin trays into the oven and fills her mixing bowl with soapy water in the sink, his eyes heavy, his hands tucked into the front of his hoodie. She puts the kettle on and scoops honey into a mug, adding some ginger. There are no lemons to be had in Thomasville, though a spindly, reluctant tree apparently grows in the yard of one of the old houses. While she waits for the hot water, she cooks oats, finds raisins, dried apricots, and some old almond flakes to add to the cereal with more honey.

“You look like you need something hot and filling,” she says as she puts the bowl in front of Walt.

He ducks his head in thanks, eating with an alacrity that reminds her of Daryl. He uses his left hand to hold the spoon, and his right, missing the first three fingers, rests on the table, twitching from time to time as he eats. She makes the tea and sets it down with a glass of cold water. He pauses in his eating, staring at the mug.

“Smells like—” He stops, his eyes flicking to Carol’s and down to his bowl. “My mom used to make that,” he mutters quietly. “When I was sick.”

“It’s good for colds,” Carol says gently. “I wish I had lemon to add to it.”

The boy takes another bite of oats, slower now, his face drawn.

“How long have you lived here?” Carol asks. He swallows, and takes a sip of water, his eyes on the steam rising from the tea.

“Five months,” he says. “And four days.” He looks at her. “Before that I was out there.” He jerks his head.

“Alone?”

He puts his fork down and curls his right hand around the mug. His fingers were neatly severed; the scars are clean and even. Carol flushes as he catches her looking, and she waits for him to chastise her like Merle did. Instead, he answers her question.

“At first, I was with my mom and dad. Then I was alone.” He wipes his nose, blinking hard. “Couple days before Lee found me, my parents went to search for food and didn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry, Walt,” Carol says softly. The boy lowers his eyes, releasing a shaky breath, and she thinks of Sophia and Daryl coming towards the farmhouse, the smell of fire still in the air; thinks of the miracle of being lost and found, the unlikelihood of it in this world.

“I was—lucky.” He struggles to get the words out, his voice breaking into a boyish register. “To come here.”

“You were,” Carol replies. He uses both hands to lift the mug to his mouth, gulping a sip and then coughing as the heat and ginger hit his throat. He splutters for a second, squeezing his eyes shut, and puts the drink down so he can wipe his mouth.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. Carol smiles.

“Sip it slowly,” she says. He nods, wincing slightly, and lowers his right hand to his lap, sudden tension in his shoulders. Carol hesitates. “When did you lose your fingers?”

His eyes lift to hers warily, his head bent over the mug. His freckles are large, red splotches, his lashes spiky and golden brown. His face tightens.

“I was sick when I came here. They had to remove them.” He looks down at the hand in his lap. “I don’t remember it.”

Carol frowns. “You…don’t remember?” she asks softly.

“I woke up when I was better and they were gone,” the boy says stiffly. “Aka saved my life.”

xxxx

The leader’s office is full of children, including Sophia, so Aka takes Daryl further down the fourth-floor hallway to his apartment. When Daryl expresses surprise that he lives in the hospital, he shrugs, closing the door behind them.

“It’s central, and it means I’m here if there are any emergencies at night.” He gestures towards a deep brown leather couch. “Have a seat. I’ll make coffee.”

The apartment is a studio, a single room with one door leading, Daryl assumes, to a bathroom. The décor is restrained, tan and cream cushions on the matching couches, an Indonesian teak coffee table, a futon made up with beige linen in one corner. A low bookshelf stands along the wall below the window, its three shelves empty but for some small animal skulls, fossils, a plump cactus in an earthenware pot.

“I spend most of my—thinking time, I guess you could say, in my office.” Aka has his back to Daryl, brewing coffee at the counter, the scent of it rich and bitter. “In here I like to be less busy. Have fewer distractions.” He turns around, smiling, and waves a hand. “So it’s a very quiet space.”

Daryl grunts, wondering whether Merle has had this same conversation with his boss, and if so, how he got through it with a straight face. Aka turns back to the coffee, and a teaspoon tinkles against porcelain.

“Merle told me a bit about your background when we brought him to Thomasville.” The man’s voice is muffled. “Sounds like it was good preparation for this.” He brings two mugs to the coffee table and sits down on the couch opposite Daryl’s. “For surviving the outbreak, I mean.”

“Guess so,” Daryl says shortly. He picks at the nails of one hand with the other and stares levelly at the man across from him. “What happened to Will?”

Aka purses his lips, tilting his head to the side. Pale sunlight through the window turns the lenses of his glasses opaque, his face unreadable for a moment. And then he smiles sadly, straight white teeth against olive skin, his brow creased.

“Have you ever seen a child turn, Daryl?” he asks. He waits barely a breath for a response before continuing. “It happens very fast. Faster than it does in adults. The virus has less work to do, a suppler brain to navigate. A smaller body to overcome.” His jaw clenches, his head turning towards the window. “The first time I saw it, it was like I blinked and it was over.” He turns back to Daryl, his face hard. “Sometimes the fever comes first, but not always. Sometimes it’s a tummy ache. A headache. Sensitivity to light. And then—” The fingers of one hand flutter, as though setting something adrift towards the sky. “The moment—the moment of—of—” His features contort for a second, into an expression of agony that winds Daryl despite his dislike of the man. “The moment of—”

“Death?” Daryl offers quietly. Aka runs a hand over his face.

“—is almost one with the moment of resurrection,” he finishes, and releases a breath. “It never stops being deeply shocking, no matter how many times you see it.”

The silence that follows his words is heavy, the air in the room solid as stone. The smell of the coffee cooling on the table makes acid rise in the back of Daryl’s throat. Faintly, the sound of laughter reaches him from the office next door.Sophia.

“Will was bit?” he asks hoarsely, thinking of the boy’s fierce glare, his grubby hand clutching his sister’s.

“Scratched,” Aka corrects him. “Sick within an hour of entering quarantine.”

The leader sighs, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes with one hand, and Daryl feels an uncomfortable guilt for the suspicion that has been building in him for days. He does not want to imagine the responsibility of putting down a child after watching them turn. Suddenly, this sparsely furnished room looks like a sanctuary. He looks at his hands, struggling to know what to say; for his guilt makes him feel no easier about the man opposite him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Aka says. The dark-haired man inhales slowly and reaches for his coffee. Daryl lifts his head. The two men consider each other, faint colour appearing in Aka’s cheeks as he sees Daryl’s expression, which is less contrite than it is suspicious. The leader sets his coffee down again without taking a sip.

“I’m going to tell you something, something that might help you do your job with less…inner turmoil.” Daryl frowns at the hint of sarcasm. Aka keeps talking. “I’ve been studying the effects of the virus almost since the outbreak. Gathering information whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

“Effects seem pretty damn obvious,” Daryl says dryly.

“I don’t mean the effects once a person is sick.” The dark-haired man seems energised by this line of discussion, his eyes bright. “I mean the effects on us from the moment we were infected. At the start of it all.”

“Whaddya mean?” A vein of ice threads its way up Daryl’s spine.

“I mean the virus doesn’t do nothing. It doesn’t justwait.” He flattens his palms on the coffee table, fingers splayed. “My findings suggest that in children, particularly, the virus has given rise to a greater likelihood ofotherdiseases. Tumours. Malignant growths. Odd infections.” He shakes his head rapidly, as though amazed by his own words. “Almost fifty percent of the children we bring here from outside are sick.”

“Ain’t they all half starved? Exposed to the elements?” Daryl asks skeptically. “What makes you so sure it’s the virus?”

Aka narrows his eyes and sits slowly back on the couch, his hands on his knees.

“You know,” he says pensively. “Carol told me you weren’t like your brother.”

Daryl scowls at the thought of being discussed by Carol with this man, his back prickling uncomfortably. Aka leans forward again.

“But she’s not altogether correct, I think. When Merle arrived here, he also had—difficulty, shall we say, dealing with authority.” He stares at Daryl. “This is a community that fosters and encourages independent thought. I’m a scientist, Daryl. My livelihood before all this was based on thinking outside the box and teaching others to do the same, in the interests of research.” He purses his lips. “But community requires cooperation. Trust.Faith.”

“Faith?” Daryl snorts. He is shaken by the turn the conversation has taken, defensiveness scrambling to catch up to his automatic shame. “This a cult?”

“Faith in the system we’ve set up here.” Aka stands up and walks to the window. Silhouetted vaguely against the sky, he is as beautiful as he is when the details of his appearance are clearer: broad shouldered, his clothes fitting perfectly, the suggestion of lean muscle in the way he carries himself. Daryl feels more like a redneck nobody than he has for months. “This isn’t a cult. I’m not setting myself up as some kind of saviour.” He turns, his face lit with a fervency that unsettles Daryl more than his words have. “I’m just a man trying to make thingsbetter. Aren’t we the same in that respect?”

xxxx

The apartment smells of roasting meat and blood when she gets home, and Daryl is in the living room, smoking at the open window. Two fresh rabbit pelts hang from a rusted clothes-drying rack missing a metal frame on one side, and when he turns to look at her, Daryl’s face is smeared with grime, a streak of dried blood on his chest above the collar of his shirt. She hoped a day outside the town would cheer him, relax him; but instead, he appears irritable and anxious.

“Dinner smells good,” she ventures.

“Takin’ one over to Rick an’ Lori when they’re done,” he says, his eyes sliding from hers. His profile is sharp-edged, his body all angles. “Soph’s over there now with Carl.”

She drops her coat over the arm of the couch and goes to him. The stink of the pelts is stronger beside the drying rack. Daryl shifts his gaze to the view outside the window. The nails of both his hands are dark with dirt, and he smells like earth and metal, like damp stones and death.

“Gonna wash up in a minute.” His voice is flat.

“I’m not—” Flustered, she looks down at the windowsill. A chipped saucer holds three cigarette butts. “I’m glad you went out today. Had some time away from here.”

He says nothing. Carol closes her eyes, an ache extending from her shoulders up the back of her neck. She has been distracted all day since Walt’s visit, remembering the loss of her own parents, seeing the remains of his neatly amputated fingers each time she blinks.

“Daryl—”

“He got sick.” The words burst from him, his fingers shaking around the cigarette. “Will. Had to be put down.”

She looks up at him, the grim line of his mouth, his eyes turned grey by the sky outside, and lifts a hand to his wrist, resting her thumb against the satin skin over his pulse.

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, pulls his arm out of her grasp and takes a drag.

“He was jus’ a kid. ‘S all.” He exhales, lifting his chin. “Ain’t like I knew him. Jus’—he was only a kid.”

She nods, though he isn’t looking at her, and thinks of the nightmares she sometimes has of Sophia lurching dead out of the forest around Hershel’s farm. Daryl stubs out his cigarette, hair falling across his face. She wants to reach for him again, but she cannot bring herself to risk being rebuffed.

“His sister is safe,” she says instead. “And if it were me, if I—if it were my child, I wouldn’t want them out there.” Her voice scrapes into silence, and she swallows. “Wandering out there like that.”

He looks down at her then, understanding in his eyes, and he does not pull away when she puts her hand on his wrist.

“How did you find out?” she asks.

“Aka. When I dropped Sophia this mornin’.” He sighs. “Got a lecture on respectin’ authority.”

Carol frowns. “He threatened you?”

“Nah.” Daryl shrugs wearily. “Talked all ‘bout trust an’ cooperation. Guess those ain’t my strong suit.”

He is speaking carelessly, but his eyes are uncertain, his shoulders rounded defensively. She is angry, with unexpected intensity, at the town’s leader for condescending to Daryl the way everyone used to do back at the quarry. The way Shane still does.

“Turning your concern about a child into a reason to—to chastise you is sh*tty,” she says. Daryl looks down at her fingers on his arm.

“He says the virus makes kids sick before it—while it’s still—dormant.” He pauses. “Sicker than usual. With other things, cancer, infections, sh*t like that.” He frowns deeply. “Says he’s been researchin’ it.”

“Jesus,” Carol whispers. She wants, with an almost physical urge, to see Sophia. Daryl’s hand slides up her arm and pulls her gently against his chest, the cotton of his shirt sweaty and creased. He sighs into her hair, his breath hot on her scalp, and she wraps her arms around his ribs.

“Tried to ask questions,” he says. “But I dunno sh*t ‘bout medicine.” He hesitates, his arms slack around her shoulders for a second, his voice dropping. “Didn’ even finish school.”

He hasn’t told her this before, and she hasn’t given it any thought. But he speaks as though it is a shameful confession, and she leans her head back to look up at him.

“School wouldn’t have prepared you for this world,” she says. “It didn’t prepare any of us. I admire what Aka is trying to do. But he can only do it because people like you are keeping this community safe and fed.”

“An’ you,” Daryl says immediately. The restlessness in his demeanour seems to have lessened, his arms secure around her once more. She snorts.

“I’m not what you’d call essential personnel,” she says with a crooked smile.

“Yeah, you are.” His voice is soft, rough, intimate as a caress. She blushes, dropping her gaze, shaking her head. “No, you are. I know you. Know what you’re capable of.” His thumb follows the line of her cheekbone. “When I’m at work, I keep thinkin’ ‘bout how you would do things. Handle people.”

She peers up at him, Ed’s face swimming before her, her muscles remembering the give of his flesh against an arrow.

“I want to start knife work again,” she says, and blinks. Daryl’s face comes into focus, his expression serious, his chin dipping in a nod.

“Good idea,” he says. “You an’ Soph both.”

xxxx

I want to try. She says it over and over, her hands on his belt, a determination in her face that pares away everything else until she is only that: not desire, not love, but a fierce insistence he is incapable of refusing. He wants to see his co*ck in her mouth, to feel her lips close around it, just like Ed did; he is hard by the time she has opened his pants, hating himself as much as he wants her.

He sits on the edge of the bed, and she kneels between his knees, and his stomach churns even as precum beads at his slit. She unbuttons her shirt, slips it off as though he might need to see her tit*, as though her mouth won’t be enough. When he tries to speak, tries to say something to stop her, she silences him by licking up his length, the tip of her tongue lingering at the rim of his head before she slides it delicately over the purpling skin to where he is leaking. His breath is a hoarse pant, his hands fisted in the bedclothes. She rises on her knees and opens her mouth, and the silken heat of her throat makes him moan loudly as she takes him inside, her muscles working around his girth, her cheeks hollowing out as she sucks. He is on the brink almost immediately, exclaiming wordlessly as she takes him further and further, until her tongue touches the base of his co*ck, his hips lifting off the bed to meet her lips.

And then she gags, a soft sound accompanied by a throttling spasm of her throat around the head of his co*ck. When he looks down, her eyes are wet and her throat is bulging around his length. The determination is still there, her hands clutching at his thighs as he takes hold of her shoulders, as he starts to sayno no no stop Carol. She looks up at him through her lashes, her lips swollen and red, and he cradles her face lightly in his hands as he withdraws from her mouth. His erection is subsiding, his co*ck slick with spit and precum, her mouth hanging open for a second after the head has left her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I can try again.”

He shakes his head, his eyes burning, and hauls her off her knees and into his arms. She is limp, pliant, her chin resting on his shoulder as he holds her.

“I don’t want it,” he says. “I don’t want it.” For the first time, it is true. “We tried, Carol. Don’t—please—”

He thinks she might cry, but she doesn’t. She lies silently in his arms, and he eases them both back so they are lying across the bed. He rolls onto his side, facing her. Her eyes are rimmed with pink, her face lined.

“I want to do it all at once,” she says dully. “To be rid of him in—in every way.” She shivers, and he reaches past her and pulls the comforter over her shoulder, tucking it across her chest. She doesn’t move. “I’ve been—it’s been so good, the way you make me feel when we’re together, and I thought I could—”

“Ain’t gotta rush it. Ain’t gotta do it at all,” he says softly.

“But don’t you want to?” she asks, her mouth twisting.

“Want you to feel different to how you felt with him,” he says. “Want you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy too, Daryl.” Her eyes glimmer. “I want to make you happy.”

“f*ck, Carol.” He swallows salt, closing his eyes for a second. “You make me happier than anythin’ ever has. Anyone. Not—not by suckin’ my dick. By bein’ with me. You an’ Soph—” He stops, not knowing how to continue. “More than I deserve,” he mumbles at last.

“No,” she whispers, and shifts closer, kissing him with cool, soft lips. And when, minutes later, he rolls her onto her belly and nudges her knees apart, she gaspsyesplease yes, turning her face into the sheets as he pushes inside her, unaware that his cheeks are wet, that narrow dip of her spine and the tender nape of her neck and the hard knobs of her elbows have already undone him.