A/N: For the record, I don't think of Carol this way and I am so glad the show decided to take her in a different direction than they did in the comics. However sometimes the muses want what they want and this happened.
The night used to be such a relief. Even monsters had to sleep sometimes and then Carol could feel herself melt away into the dark. The pressure of holding herself, her fragile world, together relieved for just a few hours. It doesn't really work like that anymore.
It's late, but the stars are bright enough that she can see them. The bodies cling to the fences, hardly moving and yet spreading and multiplying like kudzu. The moans have become the soundtrack to her life, creating an eerie and discordant melody at night with the cicadas. They never ever stop. Even behind the thick walls of the prison, Carol can hear them. Their voices echo in her ears as she tries to sleep until she can almost believe they're speaking real words. In the dark behind the fences, fear mixes with pity and she can't go back inside.
Six months have passed since Sofia. Carol's hair is growing out and winter is giving way to spring. She's gotten over the horror of her relief she felt after her daughter's death. She's right, she knows, to feel that way. Sofia isn't suffering like the rest of them, she isn't suffering like the rest of them and Carol is at peace. Usually.
Sometimes, though, she's struck with an incredible longing. It fills her heart and pushes her out of bed and away from the group. She could be with Sofia. And she both does and doesn't want it. She can hear her heart pounding with it. That's when the moans at the fences sound like whispers, when she begins to think she understands them. Their emptiness. Their longing.
Carol doesn't want to turn. Even though some nights it feels like she already has. But there's something in the way they reach for her and something in their words. There's an answer there that she can't quite hear, a truth she knows everyone wants. If she could just listen. If she could just make it out.
She listens so hard the world dissolves. No prison behind her, no fence in front of her, no stars, no life. There are only the ceaseless cries, the insatiable want. It's all around her and loud, so loud it might be coming from inside her head. Her vision swims and fogs. There's nothing but noise. She's so close to understanding. If she could only just
A hand is on her shoulder. It's warm and gentle and firm, the lifeline that pulls taut and pulls her back to herself. It jerks her back to the world and she jerks away from it, almost crying out.
When her vision clears, she's in the middle of the prison yard, more than half way to the fence where the dead are thrashing and gnashing and growling for her and somehow Carol doesn't throw up. Daryl is there beside her and that he doesn't even ask her what the fuck she's been doing tells her she's crazy.
Her entire body shudders. She hugs herself to keep from falling and the sob that claws out of her throat is not as soundless as she wants it to be.
"I-" she says, but she doesn't know herself well enough to finish that sentence.
She raises her gaze to Daryl's and he holds it, asking and not asking.
"Come on," he says.
He reaches for her again, but Carol jerks away and runs ahead because she is fucked up and wrong and so he won't see her cry.
At least her sobs drown out the voices.
In the morning when she steps outside a team is already beyond the fence, clearing away the nightmares.