Okay, so, I know I shouldn't begin another story but I had this idea in mind for such a long time and I even did a trailer video about it so I finally decided to write it. Warning though, I don't know when I'll be able to update again because I have a lot of stories going on and this one is just a very vague idea that I have. I'm posting it however so that, when I'm in the mood to continue this particular story, I'll update it. So, very sporadic updates, sorry about that.

This story will be a love triangle (Daryl/OC/Rick), so if you're not into love triangles, don't read it. Also, in this story there is a rather difference in age between the female protagonist of this story (who is 18 when the story starts) and Daryl and Rick who are in their 30's.

It's not supposed to be a crossover, but there are some characters' names and faces that are taken from 'The Vampire Diaries' (and some actual quotes from TVD as well – nothing major) though it has nothing to do with it so there's no need for you to watch 'The Vampire Diaries' to understand this story.

All you need to know is this:

Elena Flemming is the protagonist of this story and though she looks like Nina Dobrev and has the same name as the Elena from TVD, she's not the same person (she will not have the same personality though she's similar to the Elena from TVD).

She's Shane's daughter. Shane met Isobel Flemming – Elena's mother – when they were both 16 and in high school. They had a relationship, Isobel became pregnant and Shane bailed on her and the baby. Isobel decided to raise her daughter on her own. She finished high school and got accepted into university in Atlanta. There she met Alaric Saltzman. They fell in love and get married.

Isobel died when Elena was 15 and she stayed to live with Alaric, though he died as well when she was 16. At that point Elena is forced to go live with her biological father Shane though she can't stand him. The only good thing about Shane is his best friend Rick. Elena resents Shane for abandoning her and her mother but she went along with Rick and adored his son Carl.

Elena has always wanted to become a doctor so she volunteered at the hospital since the age of 14. Of course, when she moved to Kings County to live with Shane, she volunteered at that hospital as well. When Rick is shot and ends up in a coma, she's there, as well as when the hospital is attacked. She too believes that Rick died and she leaves with Shane, Lori and Carl.

I don't know how old Rick, Shane, Daryl etc are but in my story both Shane and Rick are 36 when the story begins while Daryl is 34.

Hope you like it! Tell me what you think!

BTW, this is the link for the video trailer I made even before starting this story (without the dashes). In fact, it was creating this video that gave me the idea for this story.

h-t-t-p-s-:-/-/-w-w-w-.-youtube-.-com-/-watch?v=ck5jmRPZu0k

Prologue

"I – I can't do this…I can't." She sobbed while kneeling on the forest ground, pretending there was a tombstone there, a tombstone she could cry on. "I can't move on…and I don't want to."

Even two weeks later the loss was still devastating. The pain of losing him didn't seem to abate. During the day she tried to be strong, for Carl, but at night she came here, to vent.

She wondered if she could have done something different, if she could have saved him if she had been a real doctor.

They had to leave his body in the hospital, it had been impossible to bring with them, not with the soldiers shooting at anyone moving, not with the dead rising. They had barely made it out of there alive themselves. It had been chaos that day but that didn't change the fact that part of her wished she had died with him.

There was nothing for her here, not really. The world she knew was gone, and she had lost the people she had loved most in the world in a handful of years. Rick had been the last one but first it had been her mother and her stepfather.

She couldn't count Shane as one of the people she loved, though he was still very much alive. He wasn't her father, not really. Sure, they shared the same DNA but Alaric had been her real father, the one who raised her, the one who had loved her mother and her more than anything. Shane was just a sperm donor, one she tolerated at best and that she couldn't stand at worst.

Rick had been another matter. Rick had been warm and kind, always ready to listen, always ready to console her if she was sad. He hadn't treated her like a burden or a broken thing, he had treated her like a human being with feelings.

She had fallen in love with him. It had been inevitable. Of course, she had never expected anything to come out of it, not with him being married, not with the age difference between them – and the fact that she had been a minor – and not with Shane as his best friend. Rick had never seen her in the way she wished he would see her but that didn't mean that he hadn't loved her. Rick had cared for her more than Shane ever did and now he was gone and she couldn't cope.

Sometimes she wondered if she and Carl were the only ones who really cared that Rick was dead. Lori was too busy screwing Shane and Shane was too busy trying to replace Rick in Lori and Carl's life. It didn't matter how hard he tried though, he would never be Rick.

Sometimes she wondered why Shane even tried with her. There were times when it seemed like he really wanted to be her father, moments when it seemed like he regretted his decision to abandon her mother and her. But then he would go back to ignore her or barking orders. He seemed to think that being a father meant telling her what she could and couldn't do, especially now that he was the so called leader of their group. Not that she actually listened to him. She was 18, for god's sake, she could take care of herself. Alaric had taught her how to hunt and Rick had taught her how to shoot. Shane thought that because she was a woman that she couldn't defend herself, that she needed him and the other men at camp to defend her. She was happy to prove him wrong every time she would go hunting with Daryl and returned full with rabbits and squirrels, sometimes even deer if they were lucky.

She knew that Shane hated the fact that she would go away for hours – sometimes days – and that she would spend that time alone with Daryl. He would often throw glares Daryl's way, looking at him like he was taking advantage of her or something. Like Daryl was some kind of predator out to seduce his naïve, young daughter. As if, Daryl barely talked to her as it was, the idea of him trying to seduce her was laughable.

Daryl Dixon was a mystery to her. He was taciturn, sullen and sometimes outright rude. He mostly kept to himself except for spending time with his pervert of a brother Merle. The only reason why he had allowed her to come hunting with him was because the first time he told her no after she had asked him, she had followed him anyway so he had resigned himself to her presence.

Elena liked hunting. It was the only time of day when she didn't think about Rick and how much she missed him. Hunting had the capacity of emptying her mind from every worry. It was just her, the forest and the silence around her. And Daryl, who was often silent anyway so it was all good. She knew that one of the reasons Daryl didn't protest to her presence was because she didn't talk much. They would spend hours together, eating and sleeping side by side and never shared more than a few words. Others would find it depressing but she found it soothing.

Life at camp was always busy, always loud, always full of people. There wasn't really any privacy, no time to just be. The only other times she had to themselves was the moments like this, when she would kneel in the middle of the forest to talk to a tombstone that wasn't really there.

It was during one such instance that she had caught Shane and Lori screwing. Rick wasn't even dead a week and already Lori was moving on to someone else, Rick's best friend no less. Elena had never really liked her much but she hadn't thought Lori capable of doing something so tasteless.

Carl's voice calling out for her brought her out of her thoughts. Elena sighed and got up from the ground. It was late, the sun already hidden behind the horizon. She started to walk back to the rest of the camp, repeating the same mantra over and over again in her mind: 'Breathe, eat, sleep, wake up and do it all over again until, one day, it's not as hard anymore.'

It was the same mantra she had used to get over the loss of her mother and Alaric but every death would hit her harder and it would take longer for her to get over it. She feared that losing Rick had been the last straw for her. Elena wasn't one to give up without a fight but she wondered if keep fighting to live in this world was really worth it. What was there for her but more death?