Hi everybody! Been a while since I posted anything, but I wrote this for a creative writing thingy here at my school and I thought I would post it for y'all's enjoyment.

For everyone who's been missing or waiting for an update on Running Away Never Works, if I have the time between now and Season 3 it's going to get a major overhaul because I've decided it lacks in the in-character department for some folks. But again, only if I have time. If not I shall hopefully continue posting and updating on that as usual.

Enough housekeeping. READ! ENJOY!

...And review... . Please

Mandatory Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING! Otherwise Shane wouldn't have taken as long to die as he did.

Looking back, she realized that it was his eyes that set him apart.

She thought all the way back to the quarry, even before Ed had died, and decided that she had always known he was different. Not like his brother. Not like anyone she had ever met before, really.

She had been helping the children with their school work—she remembered Sophia was trying to teach Carl how to spell "Mississippi"—and he lumbered out of the woods with a modest kill of squirrels and a rabbit slung over his shoulder. She had watched, entranced and frankly quite fascinated, as he walked past, and for the briefest of moments she saw his eyes—that clear, striking blue, the kind Harlequin romance novels called Viking blue, and she saw something in them, a complete departure from his brother's unrestrained madness.

She knew now that that something in Daryl's eyes was oddly peaceful, a quiet calm as if he had accepted this nightmare as his fate long before the virus had even begun to spread.

She saw it in him when he set out each morning to search for her daughter, and she saw it when he brought her the Cherokee rose as she'd sat mourning in Dale's beat up Winnebago.

She saw it when he told Rick about his "chat" with Randall, and she saw it when he put Dale down when Rick couldn't, and she saw it when he told Lori and the rest of the women that Shane hadn't been attacked by Randall.

When he came roaring up on his back that last night at the farm, she saw it in his eyes. Peaceful, calm, and accepting of his fate. Not capitulating, but willing to carry on despite the dead walking. And she had climbed onto the back of the Triumph and clung to his middle because she knew that calmness would protect all of them.

She knew no one would ever truly be able to understand Daryl Dixon. But she also knew that he would almost never lose that overriding sense of calm.

She wouldn't change that for the world.