Author's Note: Set in that winter between Season 2 & 3. My fic, How Carol Got Her Groove Back, covered this same period, but there's no crossover.

If you've read the author's note to "Gotta Be" you know just how thankful I am for all my fanfic readers. But just in case you don't, here's a little Christmas fic, typed while I was coughing and sneezing and running through endless Kleenex, surrounded by unpacked suitcases and not-wrapped, super-late Christmas presents. Because I love you guys best.

Happy Christmas and may you all find a moment of perfect love today, even amidst the inevitable imperfections of family.

The Perfect Gift

The air smelled like dust and dried blood, and shoes.

New shoes. New in a way that nothing would ever be again. It was like sitting inside an hourglass of sneakers. Every pair used slipping away into the decline of squashed soles and broken laces and stains of all the things they had to walk through just to keep going in this world. Carol tried not to look at the whitest ones with their machine-perfect stitches. So clean. So fresh.

It was Christmas.

They'd been lucky, to find the Payless Shoe store with its glass walls and door still intact. They were able to pry open the alley door and tie it back closed, but that's where their luck and cheer had ended. All the boots had already been raided, and all the most common sizes of sneakers. All the adult sized socks.

But they were used to bad luck, so they just kept going. Carol tucked a set of laces into her purse in case they needed them later. Maggie kicked off her boots and paraded around in a set of lipstick-shiny red heels, proclaiming she'd never take them off again, though Carol noticed she never strayed more than grabbing distance away from her boots. Glenn's eyes followed her every movement, which made T-Dog blush and Daryl snort.

Beth tried to sing a Christmas carol, but that set the walkers outside to scraping at the glass on the other side of the racks of shoes they'd used to block the sight. She dropped her voice, but a carol sung in whispers and accompanied by the clawing of corpse hands was worse than no carol at all.

Lori found some tissue paper behind the register and wrapped up the last pack of child's size socks to give to Carl as a present. He was the one who finally cracked the restless, self-pitying silence that seethed between them all. He hurled the socks at his mother, the crinkle of tissue paper and plastic a weirdly unfamiliar sound.

"I don't want socks for Christmas!"

"Carl," Rick warned, but his son ignored him.

"Why'd we have to leave the farm? At least we had stuff there. We ain't got nothing now!"

"We don't have anything," Lori corrected and Maggie stared at her. Carol averted her eyes. Her pronouncement grated like a lesson written too many times in scraping chalk, even to Carol.

This wasn't her worst Christmas, not by far. The worst had ended with a burn on her jaw from being held face-first into a turkey that was more dry than Ed had preferred, but still had enough oil in it to scorch her skin a violent red. She'd served it at two o'clock that year in hopes that he might still be sober enough to have a nice dinner with his daughter, but it hadn't been early enough.

It wasn't that today was worse than any other day they'd had on the run. It hadn't rained, and they'd only had to kill four walkers. Just like that Christmas hadn't been her worst day: she preferred turkey burns to cigarette burns, and Ed had passed out soon after that.

It was just that the holidays were like the family picture day of the year. It always felt like that was the test and if your hair wasn't perfect and everyone wasn't smiling on that day, all your other days might as well be garbage.

"We can't go back to the farm," Rick explained patiently. "It was overrun."

"So is everything, so what?" Carl said. "The walkers wouldn't stick around once wasn't anything to eat anymore."

Beth gasped, and Maggie clicked over in her heels to hug her sister and give Carl a warning look. Beth's boyfriend was part of what the walkers would have been eating.

"All it would take was a big enough sound and it would draw them away," Carl insisted. "Then we could have the farm back. We could even do it ourselves. Break some windows or start a big fire or something. Then get out and circle around so when it drew all the walkers we could go in behind them and go back to the farm."

Lori sat down next to him and tried to smooth his tangled hair. "Even if we went back, sweetie, it wouldn't be the same as you remembered it."

Most of them were from around here, but no one ever asked to go back to their houses—you could just tell in the way somebody's eyes would stray to a certain street as they passed. It was worse, Carol knew, to see the destruction in a place where you had memories of normal. Bad enough to hole up in some stranger's house with mice nesting in their cashmere sweaters and rain blowing in their broken windows and ruining their Sleep Number mattresses.

So much worse to go back to your own home and see what it had become. To catch a glimpse of yourself in your old bathroom mirror and see what you'd become.

Carol sighed, her hand going to her jeans pocket. She was as guilty of impractical sentimentality as Carl. Two weeks ago, she'd lost the back to her earring in a desperate, slippery fight with walkers in a particularly muddy section of forest. She hadn't even noticed until later when the earring itself fell into her lap, as she sat shaking in the truck while it sped away. The tiny, plain studs had been a gift from her father to her mother when she was born. When her father died, her mother passed them on to her. She loved them, that simple reminder that someone had once been so excited for her to be born.

Ed hated for her to wear makeup or jewelry, because he said it was just her whoreish nature wanting to attract other men. He only let her wear these because she told him she needed something to keep the piercings in her ears from closing, and because they were small enough he didn't deem them unduly attractive.

But when the earring fell in her lap in the truck, she immediately scrambled to check for the other one, tears rising to her eyes before she could stop them. It was stupid: she'd lost her father so long ago, and everything else in the years since. But the earrings were the only thing she had that were nice. All her mismatched and ill-fitting clothes were stolen and layered together out of practicality. She looked so bad these days, even Ed would be satisfied that she couldn't attract men. She didn't mind until Daryl cast one of his infrequent glances her way, and then she felt every baggy, unclean layer of her clothing.

Sometimes she'd lift a hand to touch her earlobe, a reminder of the one thing she had that was still feminine, still pretty. That hadn't been ruined. Except now those earrings rested in her jeans pocket, probably never to be worn again because without a back, she'd lose them. It was stupid to hang onto something so useless, but she couldn't seem to help herself.

Sound attracted her attention. Daryl was pacing along the back wall of the store, his ever-moving footfalls becoming more and more rapid. She turned around and waited until he passed, catching his eye. She gave him a small smile and his steps stuttered, and then slowed.

He hated it when people fought. Usually it ended with him bursting into the middle of it, twice as loud and twice as angrily. But she had the same internal, too-sensitive radar for angry men as he did. She knew why it really upset him.

"I'm gonna go out—" he started and Carol interrupted him.

"It's too dark to hunt, there are walkers all over, and we're running low on batteries. You'd better stay in here."

He stared at her for an extra second, suspicious the way he always seemed to be when she was trying to protect him.

"Just in case," she thought to add, cutting her eyes pointedly toward the front wall of glass, because she was turned around and the others wouldn't see. Daryl nodded and relaxed, accepting that she just wanted extra shooters in case more walkers grouped up and the wall didn't hold. She didn't mind. He could think whatever he wanted as long as it kept him safely inside.

"Hey, if you don't want those socks, kid," Glenn said, "I'll take them."

"They're too small to fit you," Carl said, still pouting so everything he said came out like an accusation.

Glenn shrugged and leaned over to grab the package. "I'll cut off the toe, make a thumb hole, use them like fingerless gloves."

"You're gonna look stupid with socks on your hands."

"Well, you're gonna look pretty stupid with cold hands," Glenn said, but his voice was gentle.

A second later, Carol heard the crinkle of plastic as Carl snatched the socks back. She hid her smile.

Daryl was still pacing, but in a smaller area now. Back and forth at the back of the aisle that she sat on. It was the emptiest aisle: the men's size nine and ten shoes. She avoided looking at this reminder of who most of the survivors were, in this new ultra-Darwinian world. Instead, she focused on Daryl, and on the looks he kept throwing her way when she was pretending to look at the rest of the group, circled around their single dim flashlight.

Something was bothering him.

She wished they had a second flashlight so she could pull him into the storage room for a bit more privacy, because he'd only talk to her if no one else were around. Probably not even then. Not that it mattered because they didn't have a second flashlight. The winter nights were long and batteries burned out fast.

If she asked him what was wrong where the others could hear, he'd deny it and probably go stomping off out into the night just to get some space. But it was Christmas. She couldn't just leave him alone to suffer, especially not tonight.

Before she could decide what to do, though, his footsteps came up her aisle. She kept her shoulders relaxed and her gaze generally pointed at the rest of the group, letting him approach in his own way. The sound of his boots slowed, then changed like he might have switched direction, then came close again. She was listening so hard she startled at the light touch of his hand on her shoulder.

He recoiled instantly. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay." She smiled up at him. "It's not your fault I'm twitchy. What's up?"

He jerked his chin toward the back of the store, glancing self-consciously at the group.

Fortunately, they were distracted for the moment. Glenn had wrestled a pair of socks away from Carl and was doing a Beavis and Butthead sock puppet show that had Maggie choking laughter into her hands, Carl sniping in whiny disapproval, and Lori fruitlessly trying to police the profanity.

Carol rose, and the backless earring pricked her through her pocket at the change in position. She should really throw those earrings away. They were as useless in this world as the racks and racks of untouched children's shoes.

She followed Daryl to the back of the store, where it was so dark that his sharp profile was all layers of shadows. He whipped back around and shoved something into her hand. "Here."

It was so tiny, she didn't even feel it at first and nearly dropped it. Retreating a couple of steps closer to the light of the front, she held up her palm to see the delicate, curled metal of a single earring back.

"Daryl!" His name formed itself on her single, sharp inhalation of breath. "How on earth did you—" Had he noticed she wasn't wearing her earrings anymore? "Where did you find that in here?"

She squinted around at the dark Payless Shoes, wondering if she'd missed a display of earrings somewhere.

"Found 'em last week." His fingers fidgeted on the strap of the crossbow he was still wearing. "Was saving 'em for Christmas—thought maybe the others would do presents, wanted you to have something. Stupid. We don't have shit, shoulda known there wouldn't be no presents."

"You…" That dear, sweet man. She stopped herself before she said anything so nice that it would embarrass him, but she didn't stop the grin from spreading across her face. She pulled the earrings out of her pocket. "Here, hold these, would you?" She deposited the second stud in his tentatively outstretched hand so she could fumble in the dark to fit the first earring to her lobe. "I can't believe you managed to scavenge an earring back. You really can find anything, can't you?"

"Found it at a store named after some lady. Claire." He was watching her hands, like he'd never seen a woman put on earrings before and he was fascinated by the process. "Shoulda got you a whole new pair, I guess. Ain't far from here. Can go back. But I—" he cut himself off and changed mid-sentence, "Mean, seemed like you liked these 'uns."

"I do like these ones," she whispered, tears quivering in her eyes that she hoped it was too dark for him to see. "My dad bought them. My real dad, I mean, not my stepfather."

Daryl dipped a nod. "I'll go by there again. Get you some more of them stopper things." He cocked his head. "Could Lock-Tite 'em. Like a screw. If ya want."

She laughed as she blinked back tears, trying so hard not to hug him so he'd stay and talk to her for another moment. "That's…crazy but it just might work. That's like glue, isn't it?"

"Little bit. Could still get 'em off, if you wanted, but they wouldn't fall off no more." He held out the other earring, his palm cupped harder than it needed to be, like he was afraid he'd drop the fragile piece of jewelry. She scooped it up, her fingers brushing the hard palm of his hand and sending tingles jangling all the way up into her chest.

"Thank you," she whispered, still smiling so much that Daryl's sharp gaze kept flicking from the earring she was fastening back to her mouth. "It's perfect. The most perfect gift."

He snorted. "Ham. Ham woulda been the perfect gift."

"Pfft," she said. "We'd just eat a ham and then it would be gone. Thanks to you, I'll have these earrings forever."

And then she couldn't stand it any longer, so she abandoned all caution and grabbed him up in a tight hug, her arms sliding under his crossbow with ease. His hands fumbled and then rested lightly on her sides, like birds poised to take flight at the first hint of danger. She took a deep, ragged breath and the leather of his vest overwhelmed the scent of all those new, factory-made shoes. But it didn't matter, because they didn't taunt her the way they had a few moments ago.

When these shoes were gone, they would learn to make new ones. Daryl could probably tan hides, and she knew how to sew. If they found someone who was skilled at whittling wood to make the soles, they could manage.

Someday, there would be shoes again. In the meantime, they had each other, and they weren't barefoot yet.