He loves her. He knows it's stupid and shallow and it'll probably just add more fuel to the fire if Merle ever finds out, but he doesn't care. He loves her. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't have been able to stop it. He looks at her and he sees everything he'd wanted his mother to be.

Daryl remembers being five years old, knowing that his mother was dead but not understanding what that truly meant. Dead meant flattened animals rotting in the street. Dead meant burying Spot in the backyard. Dead meant those flies on the windowsill didn't move anymore. Dead meant covering his ears and the smell of gunpowder, Merle's shoulder jerking backward, the muffled explosion that always seemed to go on long after the deer hit the ground.

But none of that happened when his mother died, and in Daryl's mind, that had meant she wasn't dead at all. He'd been sure that he'd be able to find her if he just walked out the door and searched around a little bit. He remembered plenty of times when he couldn't find her, only to watch her walk in the front door a little later and declare that she'd just been at her sister's house, or the market, the pharmacy. If he just went and looked for her, he would've found her.

That feeling never went away, but Daryl never did go looking for her. He waited for her to walk through the door, only a little worried that she wouldn't be able to find the house they were staying at. When their own home was repaired, he'd expected her to be standing in the kitchen when he walked inside. But she hadn't been, and by then, he'd realized she was gone. Not dead, but gone. Just gone.

As the years went on, he hardly thought about her. The truth was, his life wasn't much different without her. She'd left him and Pa and Merle to take care themselves, just the same as they'd always done. So Daryl grew up without a mother and started to realize he would've done so whether or not his mother had burned herself up in the house. By the time he realized the woman was well and truly dead, he didn't think it mattered so much anymore.

But now there's Carol. There's something about this woman that makes him miss his mother, and that's just impossible. He's never missed her before in his life, but looking at Carol and seeing her speak so sweetly to that daughter of hers sets his heart aching like nothing else.

And he realizes that he wants that. Not his mother, but Carol. He loves her. He loves her so damned much just for the way she smiles at that little girl; just for the way she pulls the kid into her arms, hugging her like it's the best damn gift in the world. If his mother had been like that, he thinks, he would've missed her a whole lot more, just as surely as Sophia would miss her mother if something happened to her.

He's tried not to think it, but it niggles at the back of his mind: He could've been like Sophia.

Daryl isn't stupid. He knows Ed's type and he sees the way Carol flinches away from him. The man is abusive, and he doesn't need the scars tingling on his back to tell him that. Just looking at the man makes him think of his own father, those sixteen years of terror spent living under that man's thumb. He beats Carol, and Daryl hates him for it. Still, just as surely as he knows Carol is being abused, he knows that the woman is trying her damnedest to keep Ed's hands off of Sophia. For the most part, she seems to be succeeding.

That doesn't make him hate Ed any less. If he were a better man, he'd have done something about it. There were times when he'd been about to. It was always Merle that stopped him with firm words hissed threateningly in his ear: "Ain't our problem, baby brother. She's his wife. Leave 'em be. That man will put you on your back sooner'n you can turn. And who's gonna help ya then, boy? Shane? That little mouse of yours? The kid? Nah, little brother. Best just let them be. Ain't none of our business."

And because Merle was Merle, Daryl had listened. He's always listened to his brother. This time wasn't any different, and so he laid awake at night, listening to the sounds coming from the Peletier tent, his stomach twisting as he remembered the shame and weakness he'd felt as a boy, and every painful blow his father had dealt him.

Still, he did nothing.

But now Merle is gone and that abusive bastard is dead, and Carol is standing there with her daughter, shocked and frightened, but alive and free for what must be the first time in years. Daryl is going to do everything he can to keep her that way. No, not just that. He's gonna do everything he can to make sure she feels safe and looked after, the way he suddenly wishes his mother would have done for him. The way Carol does for Sophia. The way Ed should've done for Carol. The way Daryl hopes can atone for his cowardice when he'd listened to her pain and done nothing to counter it.

He's gonna love her the best way he knows how.