Huge AN #1: This is an AU eventual-Caryl story following our queen after season 4, episode 8 "Too Far Gone". I will be taking and changing elements from the canon arc as I see fit, but for the most part this is original. This fic is a companion piece for my ongoing story Everything Was Gone, although it's not necessary to read both if you just want to read this one. This is like bonus material. :) It's pretty much the same story, only I'm telling it from Carol's point of view. If you love our queen as much as I do, you may just like this story! I'm not sure yet if the chapters are going to be in-sync, or if this is just going to be told as Carol's story. Anywho, now that I've finally started this one, I'm not sure how quickly updates to EWG will be posted, because I eventually want to get these two synced up. I'll try to update EWG (at least!) once a week. I've never attempted anything like this, but a challenge is always good, right? XD Right. So I will definitely need y'all's help with this. :) I really hope I don't screw this up, so please enjoy!Disclaimer (this is counting for the entire story THANK YOU VERY MUCH): I do not own or write for The Walking Dead or AMC.WwW
All was lost.
It was all gone, it had all been taken from her.
Lizzie. Mika. Daryl. Maggie and Glenn, Judith and Carl, Hershel and Beth.
And Rick. Rick was lost now too.
They had all been stolen from her.
She drove away with her throat clogged and her nose spouting.
She choked on her sobs as they echoed across her form, felt the way they stole from her lungs and left them seizing and gasping for the air she couldn't take in.
The road was long and straight, no hills or wrecks or turns, so she had to keep driving until the Hyundai pulled out onto the blacktop. She kept her eyes trained on the rear view mirror until she saw its shiny mint interior speed off, back towards home and everyone she loved.
She stopped in the road. No need to pull over. She stopped and she unbuckled and she cranked up the Beatles CD in the hippie's car to full blast, letting the lyrics wash over her and blend with her sorrow and pain.
The pain was too great, so similar to when she lost Sophia and Lori and T-Dog and Andrea and Dale. The list was too long, this pain much too familiar.
The empty hole that had opened in her chest was spreading, swallowing hope and will and love, leaving her feeling exhausted and empty.
She wanted to die. She wanted to give up, give in, forget about her family and her friends and her girls. She didn't want to deal with this. Didn't think she could. Didn't even want to try.
So she sat and cried. And sang. And cried some more.
And when her tears had run out, her eyes puffy and sore, she allowed herself ten minutes of peace, of not thinking, of not letting thoughts enter her mind, just counting her breaths. That's all she did, just counted.
And when her ten minutes had run out, she knew she needed to grow up, face her problems, and fix this.
She had to fix this. This would not be it.
She had Mika and Lizzie back at the prison. She had made a promise, but Rick was right: she could never bring those girls out to live on the lam with her. She had killed Sophia that way. She couldn't kill them that way, too.
So that meant she had to go back.
Which meant she would have to find a way for herself to be forgiven, or she should have to confess.
She could not, could never, confess. She couldn't. And she wouldn't. She owed it to his mother to protect him, had sworn she would, and that's just what she was going to do.
An anger smoldered deep in her gut at Rick's words. Anger, pain, betrayal played in circles, tumbled and rolled about in her core, tricking her heart into entertaining their notions.
She had taken care of Judith when Rick wouldn't even look at her. She had fed Carl and stitched his torn blue jeans while he lay comatose in an abandoned hospital. She had promised Lori she would care for not just her children, but Rick also, when she was gone.
And she had. She had done it all.
How could he have done such a thing to her? Rick was one of her fondest friends, someone she previously would have trusted with her life, and had, on several occasions. Had put her daughter's life in his hands, had forgiven him when he couldn't save her, when she put a bullet through her baby's brain.
He was ill. She had known it for a long time. Abuse ran deep in her side of the family, and trauma disorders were just part of the package. Her brother had shot their own father to death to defend her and her mother when she was just a baby, and that look in his eyes, that empty, horrible pain of guilt and doubt was as present in Rick's eyes as they had been in Will's.
Had been. Will had been gone for a long time now.
She knew what waited at the end of Rick's path. She had seen it up close and personal.
And that was why she had let him play farmer all those months, let him extricate himself from the Council, let him bury his guns in a strongbox in the garden.
It was stupid, but it seemed to be keeping him sane. Him and Carl both.
But things had still needed doing, and beyond what the Woodbury grandparents deemed appropriate.
They had never survived in this world, had been sheltered and protected as a courtesy. But their grandchildren and great grandchildren would not be extended the same by the world, and they needed to understand that.
But they didn't. And so she had modified Story Time.
She had done something. She had stepped up.
Rick may have been a good, strong man at some point, but he was weak now. And the good was beginning to wane as well.
She thought about this all in silence, Abbey Road echoing in her thoughts and adding their two cents.
She couldn't leave Lizzie and Mika, Carl and Judith. She had sworn. And her word was all she had left at this point.
She couldn't leave Daryl. The thought of her life without him made her quake inside, the idea of never seeing those green eyes un squint at her in understanding repulsive to her very core.
She loved him. She loved him with everything she had, had loved him for a long time. She doubted he would ever be able to be in a relationship with her, and while that sent little pricks of fire behind her eyes, she couldn't change it. And she loved him, more than almost anything. His happiness meant more to her than a shared bunk and a privacy curtain.
Even if he didn't love her like she loved him, she knew he cared. Knew he didn't really have anyone else to talk to about things. They would always have something special, a bond, because of Sophia.
She couldn't throw that away. In some sick spectrum of her mind, Daryl was her last tie to her daughter.
She couldn't leave them. She couldn't do it. They were all she had left, she couldn't, she could not, she would not leave them.
She buckled back up and pulled a U-turn.
This wasn't it. She was going back.
wWwAN #2: Thank you so very much for reading! :) I love you all so much.