Daddy Gave Me A Name

Thank you for the reviews on Fight or Flight. Writing da Srs Bizniz iz hard. But I'm going to keep at it! I've tried to be as factual as I can with my information, if I've got something wrong please tell me so I can change it. The name Adahy is Cherokee and means "lives in the woods" so I felt it quite fitting. Snaps for you if you know where the title came from for this piece.

"Did you know it's Christmas next week?" Carol asked Daryl as she drew her bedcovers back and spread the extra quilt across the bed. It was still bitterly cold, but the snow had stopped over the last few days, leaving a dry chill that crept to the bones. He was by the dresser, shrugging off his layers of shirts and sweaters. He took a towel from the drawer and stepped over to the bathroom.

"Really? Never been a big fan of Christmas to be honest with you." Daryl tossed his boots into the corner of the room.

"Me neither." She replied softly. He shut the door to the bathroom and she heard the shower switch on. She got up and picked his boots up, lining them up neatly under the window sill. He was forever leaving them lying around and she was always tripping over them. She clambered into bed, attempting to get back into her book. War and Peace were one of those works she felt everyone must read once in their lives, but she found it hard going.

Carl had been the first to mention Christmas. At first, they were convinced it had passed already, after all, these days dates didn't really matter. But Hershel wore a watch that also marked the dates and he informed them, that it was infact, only December 17th. Carl yelped with joy and insisted on hunting the store room to see if the previous owners of the lodge had kept their Christmas decorations on site. He was overjoyed to find boxes upon boxes all marked with marker pen declaring "Christmas" as their contents. Lori told him that he could spend the next day putting up a few things in the living room. Carol could even see Maggie, Glenn and Beth getting excited, even though they tried to play it cool.

Their first Christmas in this new world. Her first Christmas without Sophia. She hoped this one would be allowed to pass by peacefully. The only part of the season she'd ever enjoyed was the look on Sophia's face on Christmas morning and now that was gone. As much as she adored the Grimes family, watching them together, joyful, would be too much to take. This first year, it would be too much.

The water shut off and a few minutes later, Daryl emerged, barefoot and clad only in a pair of jogging pants. Daryl's relaxed behaviour was a testament to how little danger they were currently facing. Until recently, he insisted on wearing full gear when sleeping, right down to his chunky boots. His weapons would always be within reach. Now, he slept as Carol called it, like a normal person, although, the crossbow was always in the room. She blushed slightly and pulled the book closer to face so that she didn't get caught staring at his naked torso. He in turn pretended not to notice her pretending not to notice him as he towel dried his hair and reached for a tshirt similtaneously.

"Did you celebrate Christmas when you were a child?" She asked him, as slid the t-shirt over his head. They hardly ever spoke about before, focusing only on the there and now.

He looked at her, gauging her mood, wondering how much she was dwelling on her daughter, how easily the tears would fall if they talked about the things that made her sad.

"Not really. My grandma used to cook dinner, she died when I was 9 and after that, well, there were no more turkey dinners. Just'n excuse for my old man and Merle to get drunk. Not that they needed one. There weren't no Christmas tree or nothin' if that's what you mean."

"Where was your mother?" She asked softly, putting her book aside.

He climbed into the bed with her.

"Gone. Me and Merle, we didn't have the same mamma. His was married to my father, she went to prison before I was even born. Been caught one too many times workin'." He looked at Carol and he could see she didn't understand what he meant. She really was from a different world to him. "She was a hooker. And when she got out she just didn't come home. My mamma weren't ever married to him, she didn't even live with him. She was just some woman he met at a bar. He kicked her to the curb once he realised that she was part Cherokee."

Carol snapped her head up at the last word. It now made sense how he knew the story of the Cherokee rose, despite a white supremacist for a big brother.

"Then, according to Merle, a year later, he'd been 'bout 12, she rolled up into town with lil' baby Adahy and left me with them. She were only 17 and her parents were threatenin' to kick her out unless she gave me up. Insteada takin' me to an orphanage, she dumped with my daddy. For some reason, he kept me. Adahy became Daryl Dixon and everyday I was told what scum Native Americans were and how lucky I was that my father deigned to keep me. I never met her." Daryl recited this monologue without stopping, as if, once the dam was broken, the river wouldn't stop flowing.

Carol reached over and ran a hand up his arm, but he wouldn't look at her. "It was easy to hate people who weren't white when they leave you like that. When everyday of your life, you're told that your mamma didn't love you and that you weren't good enough for her. At the time, it felt like my daddy was my saviour, when truth is, all he did was gimme a name." His tone was beeseeching, as if he wanted her to forgive him for his previous behaviour, back in the very first days the group came together, when he only ever acknowledged T-Dog and Glenn with hateful racial slurs. He was never as bad as Merle, who went out of his way to insult and frighten everyone. As soon as he went to Atlanta, Daryl treated everyone equally, with a cold, sneering indifference. Carol was pretty sure that now he would even go as far as to call the two men his friends now, if pushed to put a label on it.

"I'm sorry that ever happened to you." She told him, sliding down so her head was resting on her pillow.

"I'm not. Growin' up like that, well it meant I survived, don't it? I learned what I had to and it means I'm here. We're here." He finally looked at her. "I don't regret nothin'. Not from back then."

Carol wanted to ask about the dozens of scars on his back and chest, even the ones that littered his arms. She refrained, fearful he'd clam up. This is the most she'd ever heard from him before. She'd only found out he was 36 just a few weeks ago, only, 4 years younger than she. She never even knew what kind of job he did before the Walkers came.

"And you? I'd thought Christmases would've been good with your little girl."

"They were better because she was there, certainly. But I never enjoyed the holiday, even as a girl. My parents, well, they were something in the community. It was always a spectacle come holiday time, it always had to be perfect. They were so stiff and formal, they never even let me believe in Santa. I met Ed at 17 and I skipped town with him. I hardly ever saw them after that. We were middle class and he was beneath us." She looked at him, apologetically, she knew he was thinking about himself and her. "Maybe they saw things in him, things they didn't like. Things I didn't see back then. Because Ed, he wasn't always a monster you know."

He raised an eyebrow at that, as if he didn't believe her.

"Really! He was sweet in the beginning, I mean sure, he always had a temper, but he never directed it at me. I thought he was my knight in shining armour. We even had a good couple of first Christmases. Then we started trying for a baby. It's where things started to go wrong. I lost our first, 15 weeks in." She let out a soft sigh. "He blamed me. I wasn't eating the right foods, or I'd been around someone's cigarette smoke. That was the time he first got physically abusive. And everytime I fell pregnant, he'd go back to being this amazing attentive husband and after every miscarriage he'd go back to being this...this monster. After we lost our fourth, Christmas was just a couple of days away, he'd been drinking and he dragged everything from our sitting room, the tree and the decorations, the gifts I'd saved for, for months, the Christmas cake even - he took it all into the backyard and burned it. And that Christmas never existed. I'd been to the doctor, secretly, to find out why having a baby wasn't possible for us. I was young, foolish. I thought it would fix us and that's why he'd get so upset. There was nothing wrong with me. It was just one of those things. Stress, the doctor thought, even though he didn't know what was going on with us. I didn't dare bring it up with Ed. Eventually, when I was 27, I had Sophia and the minute I watched Ed hold her in his arms, I wondered what the hell I had been thinking, believing a baby would solve everything. To this day, I wonder why did I bring Sophia into our family? She was this perfect, beautiful baby and I had ruined her life just by bringing into the world."

"That ain't true. You loved her more'n anythin'. You did all you could for her."

Carol gave a sad smile. "We were planning to run, you know." She told him. "I made amends with my mother. She didn't even know about Sophia until last year. I wanted her to finish out the 6th grade. She had dyslexia and I didn't want to make it harder on her by moving to a new school in the middle of the year. I was getting some money together slowly. I didn't have access the the bank accounts but I used to do the odd cleaning job, ironing and stuff. I used to hide it. And then, this hit and I thought it would be safer to stick with Ed a little longer. If only I'd gone sooner. We'd be up my parent's..."

"You can't live your life with a bunch of "what if's". It won't change anything. You might not have made it this long, you might have. You did right by that little girl. I used to think, what if my mamma kept me, or what if she'd dumped on the steps of an orphanage? It doesn't do anything. Gotta live in the present, Carol."

He turned on his side, his face inches from hers, his hand on her cheek. "I'll tell Carl to stick the Christmas crap in their room."

"No, let them have it. He's a young boy, he deserves some joy sometime. It's not his fault we're both messed up." She blinked away the tears that had been forming and he chuckled.

"Messed up? Yeah, that's us alright. If you want, we can clear out one the cabins down by the lake, get out of here til it's over." He offered, pulling the quilt up to their necks.

"That sounds divine, but I'm pretty sure I'll be required to cook this somewhat unorthadox Christmas lunch. Lori's still got her head down the toilet most of the day."

"Screw 'em." He told her gruffly.

Carol laughed and turned to blow out the candle.

"Live in the present, right? We'll make this Christmas our own." She snuggled into him, he was always so warm compared to her. Her hands and feet were always like blocks of ice. "For what it's worth, I like both your names."