Knowing, by MissMishka
DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.
Relief was the first thing Carol felt as she spied the flashlights' beams coming up to the highway from the dark woods. The moment that feeling crashed through her, even knowing that the two were returning empty handed, she knew just how horribly her world had changed in such a short span of time.
Her choked off cry as she turned to climb back down from the roof of the RV wasn't because Andrea and Daryl hadn't found Sophia. While it destroyed her inside to know that her baby girl was still out all alone in this unknown darkness with the world as it had become, she had been so scared that he'd gone out into that same dark. If Andrea hadn't gone with him, Carol doesn't know what she would have done. The hope and momentary relief from tears she'd felt when he got up to go look had so quickly been replaced by worry he may not return.
Despite her reassurance to Dale that Andrea would be ok, Carol had been doing the same hovering watch over that section of woods waiting for the pair to return. It was safe with Daryl, she knew and felt that to her core, but the things that could happen to anyone here were beyond any nightmare she'd ever had before the world became…. this. In that moment, she'd realized that if anything happened to that man….
He was so young in ways, but so much older than any of them in others. The wear on his soul from survival even before the zombies came was so painfully obvious in his eyes and she wasn't so lost in her own pain that she didn't also see his.
The door to the Winnebago opened just moments after she'd shut it behind herself and he didn't have to do anything to announce himself for her to know exactly who had entered. He carried a somberness upon this return that wrenched something in her chest as she turned her watering eyes to look him over. Not a scratch or bite or bit of blood to be seen on him, which did little to ease that clutch on her heart.
He wouldn't meet her gaze and his head seemed to droop forward further as he felt her looking at him. The stoop of his shoulders and that hanging head started the sobbing again. She wanted to find words to rid him of that shame, disappointment and regret he so clearly had for not finding her little girl, but her emotions were just so mangled from the realization that he actually cared. This redneck that everyone else seemed to just allow along was the only person she'd ever known in her life that actually cared about her or her daughter and was doing something for them.
And his posture told her louder than words how he expected her to be angry or upset at him for this imagined failure.
She knew she would have to stifle the tears for his sake as she turned toward the wall of the trailer and curled back into the fetal position. Those sobs were what had driven him off to begin with and she knew from the way his booted feet carefully made their way back to her bedside that he needed for her grief to ease some for either of them to sleep this night. He'd never understand or accept that these tears upon his return had shamefully little to do with Sophia's absence.
Fingertips skimmed uncertainly over her quivering back in an awkward attempt at comfort that froze the breath in her lungs. He wasn't a toucher and this unseen, barely felt gesture gave her more strength than her soul had known in ages. Forcibly, she breathed deep to gain control of her crying and the expansion of her ribcage was enough to push her shoulder back into his hand.
It froze there, both his hand and her breath, neither of them knowing what would or should come next.
"I'll head out again at first light," he promised gruffly, pulling his hand away.
Her breath shuddered out without her being able to speak a reply back to him as his steps told her he was bedding down to seek some sleep once more. She wanted to tell him that she knew he would, but it was the first time in her life that she'd ever known anything like that.