AN: This was written as a distraction from my life as well as to contribute to Tumblr's Carol Appreciation Week, but of course it morphed into Caryl ideas and a love of having Lori back in the group. Thank you all for being so kind and supportive, and know that your encouragement really does help keep the enthusiasm for writing going.

Chapter One

"Carol?"

"Hmmm?"

"Tell me about Ed. How'd you meet him?"

"You big on ghost stories now?"

Lori rustled around in her bedding, trying to get comfortable, an activity that her bulging belly was making more impossible by the day. "Not particularly. You just never talk about him, about your life before, and I think…I think it might be a good thing for you to do."

The pitch blackness of the house felt like inky, greasy secrets, pinching at Carol's skin to keep her own history hidden. To give in to that fear that if Ed's ghost got out, she'd have to leave with him. And she didn't want to leave. Not now.

Lori shuffled closer, despite her discomfort, and her thin fingers found Carol's in the dark and squeezed.

"He's gone, he won't be forcing you to go anywhere you don't want to go. The walkers now...they're another story," she said, her soft tones echoing in the silence over the sleepy breaths of everyone lying on the floor around them. Their safety was so precarious, their concerns so overwhelming in the hour by hour they stayed alive that Carol had to wonder why she clung to this idea that by keeping her past secret, she wasn't going to get hurt. Life was nothing but hurt nowadays—intermingled with the sweet comfort of new friends that had become as fundamental to her life as her family had ever been. But…keeping Ed in silence seemed to make him louder than she remembered and Carol wondered if maybe Lori was right, that perhaps talking about him would turn him back into the man he once was when she'd first met him—stealing from him the power he'd had over her for far too long. Could she turn the monster of the last years into something that just didn't matter to her anymore? Could that part of her life become a slideshow that she viewed as if it belonged to somebody else, its impact dulled and forgotten?

Maybe. Maybe a secret told lost all its power and something new could fill that vacated space. Decision made, Carol tried not to shake too hard as the first flow of memories swept her back into the past.

"We met when my mom was sick," she began, the images cutting in deep. The pain of lost loved ones was never going to hurt less, no matter how the world changed around them, how transient life had become.

"You were taking care of her?"

Carol smiled into the darkness, relaxing a little into the thin layer of softness her blanket provided against the hard, unforgiving floor. Lori knew nothing of her past, but in just the few short months they'd lived so closely entwined in each other's lives the woman knew her better than most from the old world.

"There was no one else." The memory of how alone she'd felt left Carol feeling instantly hollow, the imprint of those times not as left behind as she might have hoped.

"And then there was Ed?" The whisky deep tone of Lori's understanding was her undoing and Carol sniffled as slow but steady tears found a path down her cheeks and into her hair. Had she really been that foolish to fall for a man because it was preferable to being alone?

"Yes. And then there was Ed." It felt like her tale was finished before it begun because all the truths that came crashing down on her took her breath away. "He was charming," she remembered wistfully, picturing him with his neatly combed hair, handsome face with sparkling blue eyes, a coy smile quirking his lips until her heart fluttered. Even now she couldn't convince herself his interest had been a lie. They'd fallen in love until love turned into hate on his behalf and terror on hers.

"You fell in love," Lori said, like love was a natural thing that everyone could risk, that it was inevitable and beautiful and wanted.

"I told myself I was," Carol partially agreed, the frown on her face visible through the tone of her voice despite the lack of light or the crowd usually around to view it.

Lori's hand exerted more pressure and Carol stopped—she stopped over-thinking as she focused on her friend's touch, the genuine act reaching her faster than her words might have. Reminding her of her tether to this world and these people and that the past was dead and buried.

"You were, Carol. I don't think you could lie to yourself or someone else about that." She paused and her words became hesitant, unsure as she struggled not to question the kind of mind that Carol used to commit to a man that became a monster. "I'm sure Ed wasn't always like he was."

"No, you're right. He wasn't always." But it hadn't been long before the changes had found their way in. The pressure from his boss to outperform his colleagues, pressure from his grandfather to produce a son, pressure from her for permission to do anything, be anything but just his little wife stuck at home until he showed her mercy and allowed her to do something. "Before we married he was loving and sweet, attentive. He'd come and read to my mom, help me get her to doctor's appointments. He made beds and cooked dinner and was supportive like you couldn't even imagine."

The night around them fell still at her confession and Carol grew nervous that she was confiding to an empty night, that only fleas and walkers were left around to hear how pitiful her life had turned out when it had embarked on something so promising.

When Lori finally spoke it was on a gust of a breath, held too long as she considered whether to retreat or risk the impulse to punch through the farce and into Carol's long held privacy. "When did it change?"

Carol lay back, her free arm cushioning her head as she stared at a ceiling that it was too dark to even see. She'd scanned her memories numerous times to find the answer to that—for years and years she'd tried to pinpoint the moment it had all gone wrong in an effort to try and turn it right once again. He'd not always hit her, not always terrorised her with his booming voice and the flat of his belt. There'd been a period of time, a space in her history where their relationship had been carefree and innocent before the heavy clouds closed in and tainted it all.

"My mother passed." She'd been arrested by the peace on her mother's face when she'd found her, and for a moment Carol had smiled, thinking her mom had been lost in a beautiful dream of a time when she'd been happy and healthy. And, as she stood in the doorway and watched, Ed's approaching footsteps echoing along the hall, the stillness of her mother's form started to break apart Carol's delusion. She'd been hysterical by the time Ed reached her, her face a flood of tears and red with her desperation for it to not be true, and as he'd gathered her in his arms and pulled her from the room, the cracks had found their way in and bided their time. "I loved her, and it made me weak. Made me reliant on Ed's love for me when she was gone. Made me blind," she hissed quietly, furious at herself that it was only now she could see it. "I lost her and so I loved him even harder than before, terrified of losing him as well. I grew weak, dependent, desperate for whatever he could give me, and the more I needed him, the less of himself he gave me. He stole all the emotion I had left and then he killed it. Love is why he changed. My love made him a monster."

Beth wiggled across the room, startling Carol out of her introspection and she shivered. Those memories were a dark place to visit, darker than the light vacuum this house had provided with the lack of even illumination from the moon to pass through the glass of a naked window.

"Carol, that's not true. Love isn't like that."

Lori sounded like she was gearing up for a fight, her confidence in her topic absolute and Carol withered a little in fear. Her conclusions and insights were new and she didn't feel like having them pulled apart in the dark. Hershel coughed and Glenn mumbled in his sleep and Carol realised how late it was—not that they retired too late these days anyway, not when there wasn't much to do for entertainment and they needed the daylight hours to make good ground against the herds that were hemming them in.

"We'll talk tomorrow, Lori. Let's get some sleep now." She effectively cut the woman off, rolling onto her side facing away from her speechless friend, but as she closed her eyes against the stubborn tears she refused to shed, Lori's hand settled on her shoulder, squeezed then released, her own body loudly struggling to find a position where she could actually find a small measure of relief.

"Okay, we'll talk then," Lori whispered after a while, her words slowing as sleep started to close in. "But you're wrong," she said and Carol's ears perked up, holding her breath as she waited for Lori to finish. "Love don't make you weak. There may be pain, there may be heartache, but love is strength, Carol. Ed was the one what was weak, not you, and not because you loved him."

The dreams she had about Ed that night weren't peaceful.