A Will to Survive

Lacy stood outside as the rain continued to fall, the crashing of the thunder growing more distant now. The ghost of Daryl’s warmth made her feel so incredibly alone. She wanted to go after him. She wanted to ask him why he had left so abruptly. Had it been because of Maggie or was it something she had done. She stared at the door to the prison through the thick sheets of rain seeing how the light danced through the water casting strange glares and shadows that made the door appear to be shifting in size and shape. Standing only 20 feet away the door seemed to be impossibly far from her, growing farther ad father away the longer she gazed at it. She knew she couldn’t go back in even if she had wanted to, which she very truly didn’t, and she had no idea if and when Daryl would be back. As she looked around her Lacy’s eyes fell on the area of the prison fences she had helped fortify. It was only a portion of the fence and not much more had been completed since then. So much else had been happening the fences had fallen on the back burner. Lacy knew then exactly what she could do with her time.

Lacy felt her feet sinking into the soft ground and her pants quickly became coated in mud up to her knees as she pulled her feet loose from the grounds suction and splattered mud up her legs. She couldn’t care less about the cold chill that had set in or the filth that coated her as she took to completing her task. She was done being a burden she was going to do something to help. She was going to do something that mattered and with no one out there to stop her Lacy felt certain she would get it all done. She began her search of the prison grounds gathering up all that was left of the wooden beams and rubble so that she could begin her task. The weight of the debris was putting a lot of strain on her sore and bruised body but Lacy’s internal fire burned away any sensation of pain. Her breath was labored as she pushed herself farther and farther along the fence jamming the beams into the softened earth and forcing them up against the chain link. Lacy thought for a moment that she was fortunate that it was raining. It had been much more difficult to drive the supports into the ground when it was dry. Lacy slipped a few times as she worked muddying up her arms and torso as she forced herself back onto her feet each time. She ripped a splinter free from her palm and whipped her bloodied hands on her dirty pants as she took a moment to catch her breath. Lacy looked up at the sky seeing the clouds beginning to grow lighter and the rain beginning to lighten. The storm was passing and Lacy was feeling unusually strong. ‘You can do this’ she told herself as she looked at what was left of this portion of the fence. She forced herself to keep moving to keep going as long as she could. She was placing her last beam when she began to slip on the mud again. Catching herself on the chain link and trying to correct her stance she looked back over her shoulder. Carol was standing at the prison door with a tent in her hands and awe on her face. Lacy quickly shoved the beam into place and turned back toward Carols petite figure feeling a little light headed.

“Lacy, did you do all of this?” Carols voice was so warm and gentle it whispered through the air like the sun that was coming out of the clouds finally. Lacy didn’t answer her she just looked back at the 100 feet of fence now reinforced every 5 feet with metal poles, wooden beams and anything else lacy could find to help strengthen it. She pulled at her mud caked shirt that was sticking to her body and pushed a dirty hand through her matted wet hair. Carol stepped forward delicately; she glided as she moved as if the slippery ground couldn’t possibly bring her down. Lacy instinctively stepped backwards as Carol stepped forwards causing Carol to stop moving and look down at the ground.

“I’m sick, stay back.” Lacy hoped her meek explanation would insure Carol that her distance wasn’t personal.

“I have a feeling that those of us who aren’t sick aren’t going to get sick. We have been trying to quarantine the ill but everyone has been exposed one way or another. I’ve been in Death row. I’ve been around Daryl who’s been around you. If it were going to happen it would have by now.” Carols words mirrored those of Daryl and she stepped forward again, this time Lacy stayed put. Carol set down the tent against the prison wall and approached Lacy confidently.

“Lacy are you okay?” Lacy looked into Carol’s sweet face and saw the laugh lines that made her only look gentler.

“I don’t know.” Lacy answered honestly. Carol didn’t speak instead she pulled Lacy into a soft warm hug ignoring her filth and stench as she comforted her. After a moment Carol stepped back and began speaking with her hands still on Lacy’s shoulders.

“I brought you a tent. Well Daryl asked me to bring it to you. It’s his. I can help you set it up and I can get you some dry clothes.” Carol searched Lacy’s eyes for something but Lacy kept darting them away.

“Where is Daryl?” Lacy asked meekly.

“He and Rick are having a … discussion.” Lacy felt incredible guilt hit her. She didn’t want to drive a wedge between those men. She didn’t want to be responsible for putting strain on a relationship that was so vital to this group. She knew how close they were the second she met them in the woods she saw how they communicated silently and how they moved around each other in such a harmony it would seem they had known each other their whole lives.

“Oh carol, I’m so sorry. All I do is cause trouble. I don’t want to be responsible for them fighting. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I just want to earn my place I want to be worth saving.” Lacy felt tears coming to her eyes and she fought them back down swallowing hard and breathing deeply.

“Sweetie” Carol laid a hand on Lacy’s cheek forcing her to look into Carols eyes while she spoke.

“You aren’t doing anything wrong. Look at what you have done out here. Look at how much you have accomplished all on your own. You’re sick, you’re tired, you’re in pain and you could have easily done nothing. You didn’t have to build up these fences, you didn’t have to do anything at all but you did. You are trying to protect us even now when it must feel like we have turned our backs on you. You had only just gotten here when this illness began its spread. You didn’t have the chance to know any of us all that well and yet you’re still out hear fighting for us, fighting for our home and our safety. I can promise you that you have earned more than a place in this group you have earned our love. We are a family now. All of us. There used to be a phrase, you can’t pick your family, but you can. You can and we have. Rick and Daryl are like brothers, no matter what they might fight about that isn’t going to change. They have fought before. Actions speak louder than words and no matter what they might say in the heat of the moment they have risked more than their lives for each other too many times to let anything rip them apart.” Lacy couldn’t hold back her tears anymore she leaned into Carol’s small frame though Carol was shorter than her. It felt nice to be held to feel loved. Lacy wondered what her mother’s arms would have felt like would they have been as warm as Carol’s. Lacy hadn’t thought about it long before she spoke.

“I never knew my mother and my father he …. He wasn’t family when I did have him. I’ve been alone most of my life I don’t know how to be a part of a family. I was in so many foster homes. I ran away. I lived on the streets for a time. Even as a young adult I was alone. I’m so scared of messing this up. I don’t deserve this kindness you’re showing me I don’t deserve to be here.” Lacy’s self doubt was pulling her heart down into her gut.

“Stop that talk right now. I won’t hear it. You are so much more like Daryl than he even realizes. The two of you are stronger than the rest of us. You two have been fighting your whole lives the rest of us are still adjusting. We learn from you. I came out here and saw what you were doing and I wanted to be like you. I wanted to have your strength. I’m working on it and I’m not the fragile woman I was when this all began but I have a ways to go still. You deserve to be happy Lacy, I know it’s scary to trust someone I know it’s hard to open up but you have to try, what do you have to lose?” Lacy listened to Carols words and whipped away the last of her tears. She was done crying, she was done feeling bad about herself. She was going to be the strong woman Carol believed her to be, She was going to be everything Carol told her she was if only to prove to herself that she could be. Lacy tilted her head back and let out a sigh before meeting Carols eyes again.

“I can do this.” She affirmed with a nod as she watched for Carol’s next move. Carol looked again at the fence and smiled her small lips like flower petals on her soft face.

“Come on sweetie lets set this tent up and then I can help you clean up those cuts. “ Lacy looked at the shallow cuts on her arms from the porcelain shard and the scuffs and jabs in her hands from her work. She was reminded now of the small throb in her temple and she nodded to Carol her consent. Carol and Lacy had taken to setting up the tent along the wall that Lacy used to climb to the roof. She was considering dragging it up there later when Carol wasn’t around. Some part of her wanted to keep that roof hers and Daryl’s secret place. So far the two of them had been the only ones to go up there and to her it felt safe. It felt like her sanctuary and she wasn’t ready to bring anyone else into that. Once the tent was set and the fire pit built Carol began cleaning Lacy’s wounds. Lacy sat cross legged on the concrete with her eyes closed as Carol dabbed at her forehead with a damp rag. They sat in silence for a while before Carol began speaking almost to herself.

“When this outbreak started I was married. Ed. He was a brute and a tyrant and the more I think about it now the more I can’t understand why I stayed with him as long as I did. We had a daughter together, her name was Sophia. She was the light of my life. Some women were born to be mothers and that’s how I felt. Once I had Sophia I felt like I had found my purpose. After her father died and it was just her and I things didn’t seem so bad. It was almost worth this apocalypse to have her to myself to make sure she was loved and cared for in ways I couldn’t before. I had always been teetering on the tip of a knife trying to balance being a mother to Sophia and being a wife to Ed, he was demanding, he became violent quickly. I had to fight to keep her safe. Without that over my head I was given the most beautiful months of my life. My sweetest memories of her had a price though. One day we were overrun by walkers on the road and the group scattered trying to stay alive. She got split off from me and the rest of the group in the chaos and got lost in the woods. I was so broken by it. I didn’t sleep, I hardly ate. All I could think about was her lying alone on the forest floor cold and scared. Daryl was still butting heads with Rick a lot back then and it made things in the group a little tense but when she went missing he spent days and days looking for her in the woods. He was more committed to finding her than anyone else. He followed her trails and searched buildings; he brought me back her doll. He hardly slept himself. He ended up getting stabbed by his own arrow and shot by another group member in the process and he still tried to keep looking for her as soon as he could walk. Eventually we found her but we were too late. She had turned and in some ways I think it hurt him as much as it hurt me to learn that fact. Daryl is a good man but he just can’t see it. He blamed himself for her death for a long time. Now that you’re here at the prison I’m seeing something change in him again. He’s found something new to pour his heart into the way he poured it into looking for Sophia. Every night that you spent in that cell Daryl visited you. He stayed for hours because he had to know you were okay.”

Carol seemed to have stopped speaking for a moment so Lacy took a chance to jump in. She knew Daryl had been there thought she wasn’t clear on many details. She was reeling at the thought of Daryl visiting her so often. Her memory of the last week was so foggy and sporadic but as she thought about it fragments of consciousness returned. She recalled being carried, being held and cared for. She realized Herschel had been to see her too. Lacy’s heart filled to the brim with a new wave of intense gratitude it was almost over whelming. She wondered how Carol knew all this she hadn't expected Daryl and her to be so close but in a way it seemed fitting.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Lacy asked curiously. She was deeply riveted by learning what Carol wanted to tell her but wasn’t sure what Carols motivations were.

“I’m telling you all of this because I know he won’t. I want you to know the man Daryl really is not the man he thinks he is.” Lacy felt Carols dabbing continue now on her arms and she let her eyes fall on the clean clothes set aside for her. Carols motherly care was precise and skilled. Lacy felt a stab of pain for Sophia, a little girl she had never met and yet felt her absence now distinctly.

“We kissed.” Lacy said quietly. She didn’t know why she said it but she needed to tell somebody and allowing Carol inside her walls as scary as it was felt alarmingly tranquilizing.

“You and Daryl kissed?” Carol stopped her movements for a moment leaning back to look into Lacy’s face. She questioned Lacy with humor trying to cover her shock.

“In the rain” Lacy added bashfully seeing in her mind his dripping hair and piercing blue eyes.

“Daryl Dixon kissing a girl in the rain? Now that’s something. It’s honestly not that surprising I had a feeling he was a secret mush ball.”Carol continued where she had left off in a nonchalant way. Lacy couldn’t help a giggle.

“Oh yeah? Whys that?” Carol smiled turning Lacy’s arms over delicately, inspecting for more cuts. Lacy felt a certain shyness as Carols eyes roamed over her scars on the inside of her wrists. Scars that couldn't be mistaken for anything but what they truly were.

“He brought me a flower once.” Lacy’s eyes widened and she immediately started giggling at the thought of Daryl picking flowers. Her shyness washed away as Carol moved along as if she had seen nothing.

“You’re kidding!”

“It was back when we were still looking for Sophia. He picked a Cherokee rose for me. I was crying in the RV that we had at the time and he came in after looking for her for hours. Do you know the story of the Cherokee rose?” Carol looked to Lacy for an answer she shook her head no before Carol continued.

“When American soldiers where moving the Indians across the trail of tears a lot of their children died along the way. The exposure to the elements, starvation and illness left a lot of the mothers grieving without their children, so the tribe leaders said a prayer asking for hope. The next day the white flowers began growing from the soil where the mother’s tears had fallen. He told me that story when he gave me the rose and said that the flower he held was growing for Sophia. I was so touched. I knew he was a big mush ball in a hard shell after that.” Lacy couldn’t help her smile as she pictured what Carol described. She herself had seen some of Daryl’s tenderness.

“Maggie came out of the prison right when we kissed and he left immediately after. I don’t know maybe it was a fluke but I’m glad it happened.” Carol sat facing Lacy now their knees almost touching as they talked together.

“A fluke? With Daryl? No way. He was probably just embarrassed anyone but you saw. He’ll come back around just give him time.” Carol was so reassuring Lacy was feeling in rough shape physically but her spirits felt higher than ever and she wondered now why she hadn’t spoken with Carol like this sooner.

“Thank you” Lacy said with as much sincerity as she could.

“There’s nothing to thank me for Lacy” Carol said with a shrug. Lacy wouldn’t let her thanks be brushed off though since leaving death row she had been feeling nothing but thankful and she wanted to show it.

“No I’m serious Carol, Thank you for listening to me, for telling me these stories, for everything. I haven’t been thankful enough since you all found me and I’m going to be from now on.” Carol pursed her lips for a minute understanding now that this was how Lacy was healing.

“Alright, then you’re welcome and I mean that.” Lacy nodded her head already sure that she was going to take Carol up on her offer. Carol stood up now pushing off her knees and Lacy followed.

“I better head back in. I’ll send Daryl your way if I see him.”

“Don’t push him. If he wants to come back he will.” Lacy said with doubt. Carol just shook her head and smiled as she walked for the door that lead into the prison. Lacy looked at her living area and then up at the roof. For the night she might just stay down here. Lacy’s stomach grumbled loudly. She was growing very hungry and weak. The idea felt a little risky but if she could find a way to get her bow she could go pick some raspberries in the woods. She just had to figure out where it was and how to get to it.