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AN: This was inspired by an anon request on Tumblr. I’m not sure at all that this is what they wanted, but this is what happened when I sat down to try to write something in line with the request.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope that you enjoy! Please let me know what you think!
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It had been the sound of voices, late in the night, that had woken Daryl. It had been the realization that the voices were familiar that calmed him enough not to issue some kind of immediate warning to his family—because what else could he consider them—before he faced whatever foe was invading their home with every ounce of determination to slaughter them first that he could muster.
They were all neck deep in trauma and there was no pretty way to paint that picture. They all knew it, too. Still, they were working through it. They were all sifting through all the pieces, together, as much as possible.
And Daryl had hope for a future. He had enough hope for all of them. Really, it felt like the first time in his life that Daryl wanted something badly enough that he could believe that it would come true—it had to come true.
They would be patient and, eventually, the cracks would soften and become the seams that held this family together. Eventually, they would find peace. They would all find peace.
Small children were built for resilience. RJ was built to bounce back. The loss of his mother was devastating, but he was recovering. He was faster than any of them to accept that this was the way things were. He cried at night, especially, but he accepted his sister’s offered comfort. He sought affection in both Daryl’s and Carol’s arms.
Judith was a little less flexible than her brother, and the reality of having lost her mother after the somewhat ghost-like memory of having lost a father and an older brother, hit her harder than it could possibly hit RJ. Still, Michonne had somewhat prepared her for such a reality long before she’d been killed, so the child was holding her head above water better than some of the adults in Alexandria, who compounded Judith’s trauma over her loss with their own weeping and gnashing of teeth at the loss of the woman they’d considered a leader.
Judith would come back from this, though, and she’d come back to be strong and smart and ready to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
She comforted RJ and, much like him, she sought the affection and reassurance that she needed in her adoptive parents’ arms.
The rest of them were a bit trickier. Their healing in the face of things would be a bit more complicated and drawn out because of the lives that lay stretched out behind them.
Daryl, himself, felt that he was already healing. He knew that he would never leave behind anything that had happened to him—not entirely—and he’d long since given up trying to do just that. Life had taught him, through experience, that the past didn’t go away. It haunted you. And there were times that you were able to herd your experiences into the proverbial attic of your mind and chain the door so that there was little more left to hear from them than the distant rattling of chains and the warning bang of the door that, one day, the chains would come loose. Other times, Daryl knew, the chain did break and you had to deal with them again—head on and feeling just as fresh as if they weren’t ghosts of past experiences at all, but very real, current problems.
He was used to them. He had spent his whole life dealing with them. He would probably fight them until he died. When something new happened now, he simply added it to the rest of them. He dealt with everything when he had to, but he was content to keep locking the attic door.
But he had hope for a future—a beautiful, wonderful future—and the ghosts of his past didn’t trouble his heart half as much as the thought of that future warmed it.
There were two others in Daryl’s life—key components to the future that made his dreams a nice place to visit—that were also struggling a great deal, each with their own lifetime of collected and compacted trauma.
So, when Daryl had heard the voices, and when his sleepy mind had sorted out for him who the voices belonged to and where the sounds were coming from, he’d gotten out of bed and crept downstairs just to make sure that everything was OK. He’d stepped over the fourth step from the bottom of the staircase, because it squeaked loudly, and he’d somewhat hidden himself in the hallway just beyond the dining room of the house, after barely allowing himself half a glance inside the room to see what was taking place.
He hated to eavesdrop, but he needed to know that they were both fine, and he didn’t want to interrupt if there was something happening that simply needed to happen.
It had been almost a month since the Whisperers had been silenced.
It had been almost a month since Negan had laid Alpha’s head at Carol’s feet and had declared to her that he knew none of them would forgive him—and that he didn’t even know her well enough to really know her experiences—but he understood her desire for vengeance against Alpha. He wanted her to know that he knew what it felt like to lose the most important person in the world to you—to know what it felt like to believe that you would never be able to survive that loss. And he understood that such a thing could change someone, dramatically. He hoped that the offering of Alpha’s head would, in some way, give Carol something of a second chance.
And he’d begged her to help him have something of a second chance.
It seemed they were all in the business of second, third, and even fourth chances.
Everyone had wondered, though, what the overall reaction to Alpha’s life being ended would be, and none of them had wondered it more sincerely than Daryl.
As far as he knew, Lydia and Carol had barely spoken about any of it with anyone. He tried to get them both to talk, but he understood when they chose other subjects to discuss, instead. He could be patient. The future, after all—as beautiful as he dreamed it could be for all of them—wasn’t built overnight.
Maybe the foundation, at least, was started overnight, though.
From the dining room and kitchen, Daryl could clearly hear the quiet sounds of the conversation that was taking place.
He heard the whistle of the kettle as Carol snatched it off the eye before it could howl too long or too loudly and wake anyone else.
“She was your mother,” Carol said.
“She never loved me,” Lydia said quietly.
There was the sound of mugs touching down on the wooden table. There was a creak as a chair was taken. Carol sat and, perhaps, moved a touch closer to Lydia.
There were children grieving mothers—in many different ways—and there was a mother grieving her children almost miserably. Daryl thought they would, eventually, work out very well, together, to provide healing for all. And, though he wouldn’t have said it to any of them, they would all be perfect for a man that he knew who was grieving over having never had a family that he could truly love—and that he could trust to truly love him.
The future looked hopeful for all of them.
“I know the feeling,” Carol said, “of wondering if—someone ever loved you.”
“Your mother?” Lydia asked.
A quiet hum.
“She loved me,” Carol said. “She was a wonderful mother. I only wish—I could have kept her longer. I was talking about my husband. My first husband.”
“Was that—where you got the bruises?” Lydia asked. A hum of question followed. “You told me—you’d had worse bruises. Than what I had.”
“Yeah,” Carol said softly. “He—was a man who was very angry. He needed a punching bag. He always seemed to feel like the world was against him. He needed someone to punish for everything he felt was wrong in the world. Maybe he—he wanted someone to feel as badly as he did.”
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said softly.
Daryl heard it in her voice. She meant it. It made his chest ache because he hated to remember what Carol had gone through with Ed. He hated to think that the woman he loved—the only woman he’d ever loved the way that he loved her—had suffered cruelty at the hands of a man she’d trusted to love her. Carol, he thought, was the kind of woman who should be loved and worshipped. Hands given permission to touch her should only do so with kindness.
Abusers, though, often touched the people they should treat the most kindly in the worst ways because those were the people who were vulnerable to them.
Carol said something along those lines to Lydia.
“Your mother never should have hurt you,” Carol said, “but I’m sure that she loved you. Maybe she was just—very sick. She didn’t know how to show it. But—she must have loved you, Lydia. The love between a mother and her children—her daughter—it’s…”
“She never loved me like you loved Henry,” Lydia said quickly. There was a hint of bite in her voice. Carol wouldn’t miss it if Daryl didn’t.
“Do you know that—Henry wasn’t my first child?” Carol asked. There was silence. Daryl could only assume, with his face against the wall, hoping that they couldn’t even hear him breathing, that there was a silent exchange between them. Carol hummed in the affirmative. “I had a daughter. With my husband. Her name was…Sophia.” Daryl’s chest caught. It was rare that Carol spoke Sophia’s name. He remembered everything surrounding the loss of the little girl. He’d felt Sophia’s loss, in his own way, very deeply. He still dreamed, sometimes, over a decade later, that he found her out there—wherever she was lost now—and he returned her to her mother’s loving and waiting arms.
“What happened to her?” Lydia asked.
“This world happened to her,” Carol said softly. “And then I—adopted—two little girls when they lost their father.”
Silence told Daryl that Lydia understood.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Sweetheart—I’m not asking you to be sorry,” Carol said. “We have all lost. I’m just saying—a mother loves her children—even if she’s too sick to show it. And I don’t want you to believe that you weren’t loved. That’s a heavy burden that you shouldn’t have to carry.”
“She used to do this—to me,” Lydia said. Daryl couldn’t see, but he could imagine that she was showing Carol some of the scars. All three of them had so many scars between them that they could have auditioned for some kind of garish Halloween display. “A lot. All the time. She said—you had to learn to tolerate it. You had to show that you were hard. She always wanted me to be hard, like her. Nothing bothered her. She didn’t care about anything…not even me.”
Silence. Daryl understood the silence. He knew that, sometimes, much more was said in silence than words could ever convey.
“I sometimes wonder if—I lost everything that I’ve lost because they weren’t hard enough. They weren’t hard enough for the world. Maybe I was too soft…” Carol said quietly. “I’m so sorry, Lydia, for—everything—that your mother did to you. And I would never make excuses for that woman—not for her sake. But for yours? This was about her. Her insecurity. Her—insanity. It was never about you, sweetheart.”
Silence. Daryl could hear the grandfather clock knocking in the hallway as the pendulum swung back and forth, marking the minutes of silence. He doubted it was a comfortable silence. There was healing, no matter how small, taking place at the dining room table and healing was never comfortable. But it was, at least, a settled silence.
“It wasn’t your fault, either,” Lydia said. A hum from Carol told Daryl that Lydia had snatched her from her thoughts. Maybe, for just a moment, she’d been somewhere with Sophia, even. “That you lost them—any of them. It wasn’t your fault. You should never feel—ashamed—for loving your children. Any of them.”
“Maybe they would have lived…” Carol offered, but she didn’t finish. Lydia interrupted her.
“Maybe it’s better to live less time being loved,” Lydia said. “To die—knowing you were loved. Than to live your whole life…without it.”
The last two words came out weak and strained and Daryl swallowed rapidly in succession to keep himself from reacting to the words—to the feelings that they stirred up within him as the ghosts in the attic of his mind strained the chains and threatened to send them crashing to the floor again.
“There’s still time,” Carol said softly. “For you to feel—everything that you want to feel. Everything you need to feel. And I hope your life is long, and you have—so much time—to feel it.”
“I hope you feel it too,” Lydia said. “Everything you need. And…” Carol hummed to prompt the girl to continue. “I don’t know—maybe the hardness…the being hard…maybe it has to happen out there. With the Walkers. But, maybe, it doesn’t have to happen in here. We’re safe in here. Daryl—said so.”
Silence. The clock ticked away a few more moments as the night crawled on around them.
“He’s right,” Carol said. Even if she didn’t believe it herself, entirely, because her own past experiences made her fear believing in safety, she knew that Lydia needed it. She was willing to let Lydia have what she needed in the moment.
They would work to make it safe.
“I never had a mother,” Lydia said. “Not—not the kind of mother that…I wanted to have. And—it seems like you like children…Judith and RJ, they’re going to need…and I know I’m almost grown but…”
The hesitation in her words made it sound like getting them out was as difficult as swallowing peanut butter with a dry mouth. Her words came out stunted, stuttered, and slow. Carol was silent. She waited. Daryl couldn’t see her face, but his mind’s eye could.
He could feel tension in his shoulders. He knew what Lydia would ask. He knew that Carol knew what Lydia would ask. He knew the pain that Carol had been through. He knew that she would never truly heal from the losses that had impacted her so deeply. But he knew that the reason they had impacted her so greatly was because she truly had a mother’s heart, and he hoped that heart—broken and shattered as it was—was still beating strongly enough to try again.
They were in the business of second chances, third chances, and fourth chances, after all.
And everyone deserved that. They all deserved that these days. Lydia and Carol, both, deserved that more, perhaps, than anyone else.
And the future would be so good for all of them as they healed.
“Could I call you Mom?” Lydia asked, finally, after a series of stuttered words leading up to the question.
Daryl felt the rush of blood as his heart picked up its beating. He would have believed it took an hour for Carol to respond if he hadn’t been marking time with the rhythm of the grandfather clock, which suggested she took no longer than anyone else in her position might have taken.
“If you’re going to call me that,” Carol said, “then—I’d expect you to do more than just call me that.”
Daryl smiled to himself. His throat ached and his chest fluttered, but he smiled. He heard Lydia’s grateful sob. He heard her strong “Yes ma’am, mom…” where she clearly tasted the word on her tongue to decide if she liked it.
And he jumped when he heard the grandfather clock start its loud and rich chiming of the hour. It would wake nobody who was sleeping. It had become a familiar and comforting background sound for all of them. It counted off the hours in three long and loud clangs before it stopped chiming.
“Goodness, the hour,” Carol said. “You better get some sleep. You’ve got lessons tomorrow.”
“I’ll wash the cups,” Lydia offered.
“Leave them,” Carol said. “They’ll be fine until the morning.”
Daryl heard nothing more of their words. He focused on being quick but quiet—and his life had taught him, since childhood, how to move through spaces without being heard. He darted down the hall and back up the steps—skipping the fourth step from the bottom to avoid its telling squeak—and he hid himself in the safety of his room with the door cracked.
He listened as they mounted the steps with hushed whispers exchanged between them—both of them forgetting the fourth step and marking their ascent with a loud squeak—and he listened as Carol escorted Lydia to her room. She lingered there for what seemed like a long while. Daryl couldn’t see her, but his heart imagined that she’d performed her first duty as she tried, again, to be a mother. He imagined that it was painful for her, though perhaps comforting to Lydia, as she probably saw the almost-woman tucked into bed. Perhaps she offered her a kiss goodnight.
She had likely sent the girl off to sweet dreams while dealing with the pain of a broken heart trying desperately to beat, despite all its cracks.
Daryl stepped out of his room and stood just in front of his door in the silence of the night. Carol would pass right by him as she headed for her own room—the master bedroom in the four-bedroom house they’d chosen to accommodate those that lived there now.
He expected a sharp intake of breath as she realized he was present, but no such sound came.
“How long have you been listening?” Carol asked.
“Long enough,” Daryl said. “How’d you know?”
She hummed.
“Sometimes I think—I can feel you,” she said. It was an innocent enough statement. Daryl understood it. He felt, sometimes, like he could feel Carol. He could feel her in a room—in a space. It was as though something in him recognized something in her, even when they couldn’t see each other.
“It’s a good thing you done for her,” Daryl said. “Trust me. I know. Gonna go a long way toward—helpin’ her.”
“I hope so,” Carol said. “She deserves—everything she wants and needs. She didn’t deserve anything that’s happened to her.”
“Ain’t too many of us who did,” Daryl said. “Gonna be good for you, too.” There was silence, but Carol didn’t move on. She simply stood there, in the darkness, and let herself experience her feelings in silence with Daryl. He reached a hand out and touched her shoulder. He squeezed it and kneaded the muscles. “You gonna see,” he offered. “It’s gonna all be good for you, too.”
“And you?” Carol asked quietly.
“You? This? It’s all good for me,” Daryl said sincerely. It wasn’t the first time they’d danced around this conversation. It wasn’t the first time at all, and Daryl knew it wouldn’t be the last. They all had ghosts to contend with, after all, and the chains did come rattling to the floor regularly as those same ghosts escaped time and time again. Because they all had them, though, none of them were truly afraid of ghosts. “You gonna see.”
“We have a future,” Carol said softly, echoing the words that Daryl said to her, often, when they were alone. They seemed to bring her some comfort. He knew that they brought him comfort. He hummed in agreement.
“Wanna—come in?” Daryl asked, gesturing toward his room. Some nights she came. Other nights she didn’t. She still tried to leave before the children woke. She still struggled with what it was and what it would be. Daryl was confident that the morning would come when the children would find that she hadn’t left the room before they woke. The night would come when he would go to her room—and he would never stop going there. He was patient. He loved her enough to be patient. And the way that she loved him in those quiet hours before she worried that the children might not approve of something they probably wouldn’t even understand—the way she loved him in those hours? It soothed everything inside of him. The rattling stopped and there was peace. It quieted his ghosts.
Because, for the first time in his life, he knew what it was to love entirely, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what it was to be loved entirely.
In her, he felt the future—and what a beautiful future it would be.
“Maybe,” Carol said. “For at least a few hours?”
“Stay as long as you want,” Daryl offered, ushering her into the room and closing the door quietly behind them. “We got forever.”