Author's note:
So this is for hellolittlemonsterz Tumblr prompt of Carol breaking down over Sophia during the winter and Daryl witnessing it and offering some comfort.
It kinda changed while I wrote it, but I tried. Hope I succeeded.
Warning for language, violence/gore and alot of angsty sadness.
Hope ya'll like it! Enjoy!

I wanted to give you everything,
but I still stand in awe of superficial things.
I wanted to love you like my mothers, mothers, mothers did.
Civilian.
Civilian- Wye Oak

The department store was huge, every noise echoing while they tried to scavenge what they could as silently as possible.
So far there been no sign of anything alive or otherwise, but Carol knew that it didn't mean anything. Things could turn sour at any moment.
After the farm, after the last month on the road, that lesson had been ingrained into their bones.
Lori stood close behind as they moved through the building's expansive first floor, her now protruding belly brushing against the back of Carols shirt every once in a while as Lori leaned ahead, glancing forward worriedly to where Rick, Daryl and Carl led the pack.
Beth walked along Carol's left, her father hovering beside her protectively, shotgun in hand while Glenn and Maggie guarded the right, T-dog watching their backs. They moved like some sort of elite military unit, everyone hyper-aware of each other, almost painfully so in Carols mind as Loris stomach- her unborn baby really- brushed against her back again.
She had thought that she was fine with it, the pregnancy, happy even at the prospect of someone new to nurture and care.
But ever since Lori had started showing, she couldn't help but think back to her baby, her Sophia and how the doctor had told her that with her previous miscarriages that the chances for this one were sparse.
He'd warned her not to get her hopes up, but she'd done just the opposite, throwing herself into buying baby toys, room decorations and tiny lace booties. Blissfully throwing herself away from Ed's punches and insults, burying herself into the little girl growing inside her.
The doctor had been astounded when the delivery went along so smoothly, without complications, calling it the closest thing he'd seen to a miracle.
Carol hadn't been surprised at all. Her Sophia was a perfect little miracle, something beautiful and flawless born out of something painful and shattered.
She could hardly believe that Ed had been partly responsible for her creation, that someone so sweet could come from something so vile.
Sophia was nothing like Ed, she'd known from the start.
Sophia was hers.
Carol didn't really have anything anymore and watching as Lori slowly grew and expanded felt like throwing salt on a wound.
A constant reminder of how alone, lost and drifting she was with Sophia gone. Of how she didn't know what to do with herself anymore.
She was a nurturer. It was in her nature. But now she had no one to look after.
Carl didn't need his own mother, a fact he'd made perfectly clear in an angry shouting match during which he'd confessed to knowing about Shane.
He certainly didn't need Carol, not with the cold, grim little man he'd become. But she'd always taken care of others, it was all she knew.
The closest thing to simple friendship that she'd had was with Daryl- and he'd hardly spoken to her this past month.
She was a burden, one he'd cast off. She didn't really blame him. She'd cast herself off if she could.
Feeling Loris stomach nudge her in the back again, she took her gaze up from the dirty, red-tinged vinyl floor, picking up her pace.
Beth and Hershel had fallen back near T-Dog she noticed, talking to him in hushed voices while he nodded every few seconds in reply.
And as her eyes traveled back to the front she saw it, a flash of dingy blue to the left that had her stopping instantly in her tracks.
It was silly, her stopping, her logical side protested, not to mention dangerous. This girl was clearly not her daughter.
The girl was around the same age, a year or so separating her from Sophia, her hair a similar shade of blonde but with a more straw like color to it- longer too, falling just past her shoulders. She also wore a tiny pair of jean shorts that Sophia would never wear- she'd always hated showing her legs and even on a hot day Carol struggled to get her into a pair of pants that revealed her ankles.
This girls face was also notably rounder, skin gray and pale, marred by a mix of freckles and scratch marks. Her blank, dead eyes a cloudy and sunken green.
The similarities were noticeable, however this girl was not her daughter.
But this girl was wearing Sophias shirt.
The little navy blue shirt with the rainbow on the front that she'd worried would be too young for Sophia when she'd picked it up from a bargain bin at Walmart.
The one that Sophia almost never willingly changed out of.
That was enough to send Carol reeling, frozen, feeling as though that god awful day at the barn was on repeat in front of her as the dead girl approached, snarling in a way neither human nor animal. It felt like Sophia was walking towards her all over again, empty, vacant of everything but hunger.
She'd barely taken half a step forward when Daryl appeared behind the girl, who let out a confused hiss as he drove his knife into her skull, the black, cold and congealed blood splattering across her face forcing Carol to acknowledge how close she'd actually been.
The girl fell forward with a distinct shunk as Daryl pulled the blade from her head, brain matter leaking over the floor as he glared angrily at Carol.
Everyone was looking at her she realized. She felt their eyes on her back, glaring, judging or worse yet- pitying. Her stomach churned.

"Hell was that?" Daryl snapped, growling, pacing in front of her.

"Daryl," Rick tried, attempting to speak over the hunter," we don't have time for this-"

Daryl continued, ignoring him, tone getting angrier as he went on. "Were ya tryin' t' get yerself killed? Where ya? Tha' wha' yer after? Optin' the hell out? 'Cause if ya are I'll try not t' waste the fuckin' effort savin' yer ass next time-"

"Daryl that's enough!" Rick interrupted with a bellow, directing all eyes to him. "We'll deal with this later- for now we need to find some food and bunker down, understood?"

Daryl nodded, sending Carol a pointed glance before he began to walk away, mumbling. "Did'n answer the damn question."

"She was wearing Sophias shirt," Carol spoke suddenly, the words leaving her before she could stop them, feeling weak for freezing over something as meaningless as a cheap garment that could be purchased at any Walmart in the country.

Daryl didn't speak, his gaze falling to his boots as he walked away, a pall coming over the group.
No one spoke for the rest of the run.

Carol was curled up in the far corner of the small boutique they'd claimed as shelter for the night.
No one had spoken to her since the run, everyone avoiding her, whispered conversations ending when people noticed her standing nearby.
It was better to separate herself from them for now, it would make the silent awkwardness and the pity in their eyes easier to handle.
Sleep was evading her- as it had for over a week now, so she simply stared hard at the brick wall, trying hard as she could to turn her thoughts off.
They only seemed to multiply, an endless chorus of Sophia's-dead-Sophia's-dead-Sophia's-dead-dead-dead running on a loop through her mind.
She squeezed her eyes closed, hot tears breaking out of them, leaving damp, salty trails down her cheeks.
She sobbed silently, she'd mastered that particular skill during her marriage. Crying so softly someone could be right beside her and never hear.
Her fingers twiddled with the little gold cross around her throat, as she so often did when she was nervous and scared, when the world simply seemed too wrong for her alone to deal with. The world had never been so broken before.
Before there had been Sophia, a little piece of innocence and kindness untouched by lifes cruelty. Before she'd had something to carry on for.
She heard the thin gold chain snap as she fiddled with it, leaving her with a small, seemingly inconsequential piece of metal in her palm.
She stared hard at it, searching for some sign of the supposed all-powerful greatness that lay behind the piece of symbolic jewelry in her hand.
The all-powerful greatness that had decided to ignore her pleas for her baby to come back to her, safe and unharmed.
The all-powerful deity that had chosen to let Sophia die alone in the woods, terrified and in pain, wracked with fever.
The deity that had let Sophia become one of Them, who'd ruled it a good decision for Sophia to burn with disease as payment for her mothers sins.
God listened to my baby cry and didn't help her, she thought as she began glaring at the cross, began to hate it.
God had refused to save Sophia, and as she gave the cross a fierce toss she decided that she would have no part in His lies and false hopes. Not anymore.
She heard a heavy breath be released from behind her and she turned around, nearly jumping out of her skin before she recognized it as Daryl.

"Ya al'ight?" He asked carefully, voice low.

She shook her head. "No. But I will be. At least I hope so. How long have you been there?"

He shrugged, glancing anxiously around the store. "Not tha' long...Look, 'bout wha' I said earlier-"

"It's okay."

"Naw it ain't," he insisted."Didn' mean none a' it, jus' said it. Fuck if I know why..." He took a deep breath, seemingly struggling to speak. "I know tha' things ain't quite right, not since Sophia...An' I ain't actin' right, I'm always sayin' shit I shouldn't fer no fuckin' reason, but I know tha' ya ain't really been al'ight since Sophia."

She let out a mirthless chuckle at the understatement of the century. "And?"

He took another breath, running a hand across his brow nervously. "And tha's al'ight. Ain't gon' promise t' fix it 'er nuthin' 'cause I got no idea wha' I'm doin'- but I am gon' try. Whether 'er not it works is anybodys fuckin' guess."

A smile crept across Carols lips then, albeit a tiny, hesitant one and she nodded to him. "Thank you."

He simply shrugged, mumbling a quiet "don't mention it," walking away towards the front of the store to take his turn at watch.
But Carol knew he was there and that was what mattered.