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!
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Carol stood by the car and stared into the woods at the exact spot she remembered seeing Sophia disappear from her view for the last time. She wished she could see her now, coming toward her from that exact location, but she was starting to lose hope that she ever would.
Maybe the losing hope was natural, but it was hard on Carol. In addition to the sea of other emotions she was wading through, it bogged her even deeper down with guilt.
What kind of mother lost hope for her child?
Every hour that ticked by was another hour she was out there—another hour of danger. With the sun dropping down, that meant another night.
And Carol just didn't know.
She didn't know if Sophia was fine somewhere, hidden, or if she was suffering. She didn't know if she was alive or dead. She didn't know if she'd ever see her again to get some answers to all the questions that rolled around inside her mind or if she'd spend the rest of her life simply not knowing what happened to her daughter.
The not knowing was the hardest part of it all. And the not knowing was driving Carol to lose hope.
She could stare at that spot in the woods like a portal to another world—a world where she might have been happy despite the madness around her—but she was losing hope that it would ever bring her Sophia again.
"We'll come again tomorrow. You know there's always a chance," Andrea said, walking up behind Carol and breaking the hold that her thoughts had on her. The sun was going down and they wanted to get back to the farm before it got dark.
She couldn't explain to them that she was losing hope and that, because of that, her time spent standing there felt more like a vigil than anything else. She couldn't let them know that she was the horrible kind of mother that could lose that hope for her only child.
"I don't. I really don't need to hear it anymore, Andrea. Save the thoughts and prayers," Carol said.
Daryl had been right. The thoughts and prayers weren't doing anything about the situation. Even the searching was doing very little. Her little girl was still gone. Her baby was still lost in the woods that Andrea and Shane didn't even want to be close to when night fell.
"You never know, Carol," Shane offered from behind her. She simply held her hand up to stop the flow of empty words that meant nothing and did even less.
He was right. She didn't know. And she didn't know if she'd ever know anything about Sophia again except that she was just gone—left behind in the woods—and Carol was constantly fighting against losing the hope that she'd ever see her again.