AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.
This one is partially from the show and partially of my own creation/embellishment.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
If Carol said she couldn't believe what was happening, she'd be feigning her own ignorance. This had been coming since the moment that Rick had returned to the highway without Sophia. Carol had been fearing it from the very beginning. She'd been feeling it coming since they'd started moving cars around the highway—they wanted to leave. They wanted to move on. They wanted to leave Sophia behind.
And the one good reason, the only reason, that Carol could offer Shane about why they couldn't just go right now was Sophia, even if she knew that it wouldn't be a good reason to Shane.
"Because my daughter's still out there."
Sophia was still out there. She was still lost in the woods. They hadn't found her. Carol's arms were still empty. It might mean very little to most of the people present, but it meant the world to Carol.
If they moved on, they would have to do it without her. She couldn't just leave without knowing what had happened to Sophia. She'd rather stay, alone, and die in the woods herself than try to live with the knowledge that she'd simply packed up and left her only child behind to fend for herself in this world.
But it wasn't a surprise that they wanted to move on and Carol wasn't shocked that Shane would suggest it. Everyone was concerned with only their own these days—the world was taking them back to some kind of primitive way of life—and those who didn't have anyone were just disposable to the group. Earn your keep and keep up or be left behind.
"Carol..." Shane started, blocking out her name as he stumbled over it in his frustration. His tone already told Carol everything that his words were more than likely going to spell out for her—everything that she already knew. Sophia wasn't important to him. Sophia didn't matter to him. Carol didn't matter to him, either, and she knew that. Lori was the only thing that mattered to Shane. Lori and whatever mattered to Lori. "I think it's time that we all start to just consider the other possibility."
Carol stopped listening to him. Anything in that train of thought, she wasn't listening to. She didn't need to hear it. If he thought that she hadn't considered the other possibility—if he really thought that it wasn't the other possibility that kept her up at night—then he was a fool. He was the biggest fool of them all.
Rick jumped in, but his words practically sounded like they were under water for Carol. They were weak and they held no real conviction—she didn't need to hear them either. He'd agree with her, and he'd say that they couldn't leave Sophia behind, but if it came down to it? Rick would leave Sophia behind. He already had. He'd leave Carol behind, too, if it was her decision to stay and not abandon her daughter.
"I'm close to finding this girl," Daryl said, jumping in, suddenly. "I just found her damn doll two days ago." He'd been standing near Carol, hovering to her side and guarding silence, and now he stepped forward and made himself more visible to Shane. He made himself heard. Carol's stomach flipped. Daryl would be on her side. He'd been on her side since the beginning—since Sophia had gone missing—more than anyone else had. And right now? She needed someone on her side.
"That's what you did, Daryl," Shane yelled back at him. "You found a damn doll!"
"You don't know what the hell you're talkin' about!" Daryl growled, yelling at Shane and moving toward the man like he might take his anger out on him with his fists. He might have reached him, too, if Rick hadn't put an arm up in an effort to keep the peace and keep distance between Shane and Daryl.
And then Shane started yelling. He started being Shane. And Carol heard him again, even though his words made her chest ache.
After forty eight hours they were looking for a body. Even if Sophia was alive—even if Daryl were to find her—she wouldn't come to him. She'd run in the other direction, afraid of Daryl. Carol heard it all and it all struck her hard. And she knew which of his toxic statements hurt her more. She'd already come to terms, though she held onto what little hope she could, with the fact that they might not find Sophia alive. She knew that there was a good chance that her daughter couldn't survive the world that she'd been left alone in. Hearing it wasn't a shock to her system and it wasn't a surprise.
What hurt her most, at that moment, was that he could be so callous to Daryl when it was Daryl who had been the one that was searching for Sophia in the first place. It was Daryl, not Rick or Shane, that was trying to bring Sophia back. It was Daryl that was worried about her survival and wanted her returned safely.
Neither Rick nor Shane seemed sincerely concerned about it at all. Neither of them ever had.
And Carol felt like Sophia, no matter his state of dress or what he'd endured during his search, would come to Daryl if he were to find her alive—because though Sophia had always been fearful of people, it was because she'd always been around people that weren't looking out for her well-being. She'd always been, too, a pretty fair judge of character—and Daryl was a man that Carol was certain was worthy of her daughter's trust. Sophia would sense it too. She would know that she could trust him to protect her.
Carol's chest ached because she knew that the words that Shane was spouting were words that would hurt Daryl. They were words that, without saying it explicitly, placed Shane above Daryl and put Daryl down. Daryl, Carol was sure, had been put down a great deal in his life.
Daryl responded to Shane in the only way that he seemed to know how. With anger. He lunged at Shane and for a moment it looked like there might be a veritable dog fight between the three men—Rick involved mostly for his efforts to stay in the middle and try to keep violence from taking over. When it became clear that a fight might truly break out, everyone moved toward the cluster to break it up and push Daryl in one direction while they moved Shane in the opposite direction.
It happened quickly, like fights often did, and it was broken apart equally as quickly. Daryl, still visibly working to calm himself and with his chest heaving, was pushed in Carol's direction. As soon as the two of them were separated, Shane's attention was turned from Daryl and back to Rick—back to the problem of a barn full of Walkers. And it wasn't long before the Walkers let their presence be known, rattling the barn doors and threatening to try to break them down.
Carol followed the others, backing away from the threat, with the full intention of speaking to Daryl about what had just happened.
She wanted to let him know that she appreciated his standing up for her—and his standing up for Sophia—when Shane wanted to leave the little girl behind. She wanted him to know, too, that Shane's words were spoken in anger, but they hadn't meant anything. They weren't true. Carol knew her daughter, and she knew that Sophia, even if she was afraid, would trust Daryl because Carol trusted him.
But she couldn't find him. Somehow, in a matter of minutes, Daryl slipped away from her. She ended up, as she usually was, in the company of Andrea and Lori, but Daryl was nowhere to be seen. Carol asked Glenn if he'd seen where Daryl went, but he hadn't. Rick walked up, offering some word about what he planned to do to continue the search for Sophia—if he ever managed to get around to it—and Carol quickly asked him if he'd happened to have seen where Daryl had gone. Like everyone else, though, he'd missed Daryl's departure entirely.
Carol quickly abandoned the small cluster of people and made her way toward Daryl's tent. She found it empty. He was gone. It took her only a moment to figure out where he'd went.
Shane wanted them to leave and they would leave. It was just a matter of time. Any resolve that Rick had to stay and keep looking for Sophia—or keep allowing Daryl to look for her—would wane soon and he'd be on board with Shane's plan. There was no reason to stay and search for a body. They had to move on.
Daryl was going to look for Sophia. He was determined to find her and he was determined to do it before they could try to force them to pack up and move on.
Carol knew that, if they left, she'd stay behind, but she wasn't sure what Daryl would do. She felt, even if she was just making it up to make herself feel better, that he'd stay with her, but she couldn't put words into his mouth.
And maybe Daryl didn't want to face making that decision.
Maybe he didn't want to face the fact that, eventually, the both of them would have to talk about what a decision like that might mean for them.
In the horse barn, Carol found Daryl just as she'd suspected she might. He was making the attempts to saddle one of the horses. He was preparing to slip off, without letting anyone know, and continue his search. As much as Carol wanted him to find Sophia, though, she knew that he wasn't well enough to go. She knew that his body needed to recover from all that it had been through.
And she had heard what Shane said—something she'd already thought about.
"You can't," Carol said.
Daryl stopped, only for a second, what he was doing and glanced at her.
"I'm fine," he responded. His tone of voice carried a hint of "get the hell out of here" or "go back to what the hell you were doing." She half expected him to tell her that it didn't concern her when, in reality, it concerned her more than anyone.
He was fully taking on this burden, and it was his choice. She hadn't forced him into it. Nobody had. He was doing it because he wanted to. He was doing it because he felt like it was the right thing. Maybe he felt like it was the only thing that he could do.
And Carol wondered, too, if deep down he might be doing it for her. He'd done more for Sophia than Ed ever had, but he'd done more for Carol too.
"Hershel said you need to heal," Carol said.
"Yeah...I don't care," Daryl responded. It was the same kind of response a child might give when they were told not to do something that they wanted to do. He didn't want to be put off from doing this—his mind was set.
"Well I do," Carol responded. "Rick's going out later to follow the trail."
She hoped that the information might deter him from trying to go out. The promise that someone else might take action could convince Daryl to heal like he needed to heal. In her gut, though, she knew that he wasn't going to be swayed by those words. He'd know, as well as she did, that Rick wasn't going to find Sophia and he'd likely never even make the start to look for her. The promises, at this point, were empty. When Daryl spoke, though, he removed any doubt that Carol might have had over whether or not he believed that they could depend on anyone else to help find Sophia.
"Yeah. Well, I ain't gonna sit around and do nothing," Daryl said. The bite to his words suggested that not only would he be doing nothing, but nothing would get done at all.
"No," Carol said. "You're gonna go out there and get yourself hurt even worse." Suddenly Carol's chest tightened up to an uncomfortable point. She tried to swallow back the emotion, but she couldn't. She didn't want him to go out there. She didn't want to sit, later that evening, wondering what happened to him if he didn't make it back. She didn't want to face the added pain, that night, of crying over his loss even as she still cried over Sophia's. She didn't want to hear them say that they were moving on—without Sophia and without Daryl—and she didn't want to have to make the decision to stay behind, alone, for the both of them. "We don't know if we're gonna find her, Daryl. We don't. I don't."
It broke her heart in two—she could feel it shattering in her chest—to admit that out loud. Thinking it was something she was growing accustomed to, even when it took her breath away, but voicing it was another thing entirely. Voicing it to Daryl, especially, was painful because she knew the way that he felt. She knew how hard he was holding onto the hope that he would find Sophia and she would be safe.
Carol felt like she was breaking his heart, even as she broke her own.
"What?" Daryl asked, looking at her with betrayal across his features. The pain on his face and in his eyes was real and that only made it harder for Carol to breathe at the moment.
"I can't lose you too," Carol said quietly.
He stared at her a moment, and slowly the betrayal faded into anger—the only way he seemed to know how to deal with complicated emotions. He made a swift move forward and threw the saddle that he'd been preparing to use on his ride. Carol heard his yelp and saw the pain that the movement caused him. She rushed toward him, asking him if he was all right.
At this point, she couldn't bear to think that he wasn't.
"Just leave me be!" He barked at her. "Stupid bitch," he mumbled under his breath.
Carol watched him go, the comment not hurting her at all because she understood that it was only born of his anger and pain, before she cleaned up the mess that he'd left behind so that Hershel wouldn't be bothered and pressure them to leave sooner. She'd go and find Daryl when it was time. She'd try to talk to him and apologize. She'd try to explain to him what she meant.
But first, he needed time to cool down.
And she needed time to digest, for herself, what she meant—because the feelings were new to her. And they were complicated, and they were uncomfortable, and they felt out of time and out of place. Carol had to understand them better, herself, before she even attempted to explain them to a man like Daryl.