[CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS/FLASHBACKS CONTAINING MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH]
As she watched her reflection stare back at her from the mirror - her long hair frayed and tangled at the ends, and her cheeks tinged pink from their arduous journey through the bitter cold - Carol knew there was no point in attempting to recognize herself anymore.
She had lost herself again.
Fleeting memories flickered through her mind at the silent admission. Sitting next to Ezekiel by the fire...opening up to him about Sophia...assuring him that if she were to ever lose her way again, her family would be able to guide her home. But things had a way of changing. She had lost herself again, and this time there was no picking up the pieces.
She gripped the edge of the sink in front of her as more recent, more intrusive memories flooded back to her conscious mind: the day of the fair, signing Michonne's charter with promises of a brighter future, wrapping her arms around Henry and Ezekiel for what she hadn't known would be the last time.
That day seemed to play on a perpetual cycle through her subconscious. Like a reel of film that she could never manage to pause. A recurring nightmare that never ceased.
Carol had been unsettled from the moment they had come across Siddiq, battered and bloody, struggling to formulate a coherent thought as he clutched tightly onto Michonne while their small group began to approach seemingly arbitrary border that Alpha's group had explicitly marked. Initially she had assumed that Siddiq had been beaten and left there as a warning sign...as a way to demonstrate what could be expected if they were to encroach on what the Whisperers considered to be their territory.
But instinct informed her that there was more to it than that..that Siddiq's condition was far from the worst of it. Her intuitive feeling of alarm only found its confirmation as the pikes that marked the border came more vividly into focus.
The blood coursing through her veins ran ice cold when her conscious mind had finally willed itself to process the sight in front of her.
Hair rippling around familiar faces, separated from the rest of who they once were.
The highway men that she and Ezekiel had recruited to protect the roads leading to the Kingdom.
Enid.
Tara.
Then suddenly, and without warning, the rest of the world around her lurched to a complete standstill.
Even with the gruesome memories painting vivid pictures behind her eyes, Carol remained stoic. Her tears had run dry weeks ago.
Tired eyes flickered over her own gaunt features as her fingers clutched the metal scissors between them, settling a portion of her hair between the small blades.
"No! No!"
Daryl's words had sounded distant despite his close proximity. Strong hands had grabbed her shoulders, attempting to force her gaze away from the carnage in front of her.
"Just look at me. Just look at me."
But the vision had already been burned into every aspect of her memory. Had he reached her just a fraction of a second earlier, the sight of her young son's glassy eyes...the sight of the wind allowing familiar dreadlocks to frame her husband's now lifeless face...may not have been the only thing she could see when she closed her eyes from that moment forward.
As the scissor's blades cut through her long locks of white hair - finally severing her completely from the blissfully domestic life that had become nothing more than a distant memory - her only regret was that she had foolishly allowed herself to renew her faith in a world that had never been anything short of cruel.
A world that had forced her to endure the pain and horror of losing a child multiple times.
A world where it took the end of normalcy for her to find the love of her life, only to have him ripped away from her in one of the most gruesome ways imaginable.
Carol looked at herself in the mirror once again, long strands of hair no longer framing every angle of her face, and with a deep, steadying breath she emerged back out into the darkness of a room only illuminated by the glow of the smoldering embers of the fireplace. She crept over to the corner of the room where she had left her things, taking care not to wake any of the few members of the Kingdom who slept huddled together while they waited for the Hilltop to provide them with a permanent home.
Unpacking nothing more than a small box filled with Henry's things, the compass that Judith had given her as a gift in an attempt to ease her pain, and a small pile of Ezekiel's clothes, she quietly made her way out of the confines of the four walls and out into the dead of the night. She shivered in the winter's cold only briefly before pulling her late husband's worn overcoat over her shoulders, allowing herself a moment to almost relax into the feeling of his comfortingly familiar scent surrounding her.
She had to leave.
She wasn't sure where she would end up, but she knew she had to leave this all behind.
"You goin'?"
Daryl's gruff voice sounded from only a few feet away. If she didn't know him so well, she may have wondered why he was still awake at such an hour. Or how he had known where to find her. But their bond had become so unbreakably strong over the years that those questions did not need to be asked. Even without knowing, she knew.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Carol calculated her words before responding.
"Yes," she said with a sense of stoic honesty. "Don't try to stop me."
A short silence hung between them, but she made no attempts to keep moving.
"What about your people?"
"Ezekiel's people," She subconsciously took a downward glance to the ring around her finger when the name fell from her lips. "Those people need their leader...not me."
"You're their leader now."
"I can't lead them, Daryl. Not like this."
It was the first time she had spoken the words aloud, but it was something she had known since that fateful day of the fair. She was thrown into the position of needing to lead the people of the Kingdom through their period of mourning. How could she effectively do that, however, when her own grief was so paralyzing some days that she could barely hold the pieces of herself together enough to make it through? Daryl seemed to understand without her needing to verbally explain, because he backed away from the subject with nothing more than a nod.
"Y'know where you're headin'?" He asked.
Carol shook her head.
"I don't know. Away."
More silence, and thoughts of Ezekiel floated back to her subconscious. Something that caused her no emotional pain this time, but rather a fleeting few seconds of internal warmth as she could practically see the softness in his eyes...remember the gentle tone of his voice.
"Maybe you could go...and not go."
He had barely known her, and yet had been so staggeringly concerned for her wellbeing. The smallest hint of a smile almost touched the corners of her lips for the first time in as long as she could recall at the distant memory.
"Weather's nicer out west," she finally spoke again.
Daryl looked at her, an unmistakable touch of sadness in his expression, and she finally took another step towards him, wrapping him into a tight embrace to silently assure him that she would miss him too. When they broke apart, he looked at her again.
"Just...be safe," he told her. "You know you always got a home in Alexandria if you change your mind."
Carol responded with only a brief nod, and with a final squeeze of his shoulder, she walked away.
Away from those who she'd considered to be her family. Away from the people who'd called her their Queen for years. Away from everything that reminded her of the two people she would have given anything to wrap in her arms one last time and kiss them goodbye.
Reaching into the pocket of Ezekiel's overcoat, she finally fished out Judith's compass, flipping it open and waiting for the tiny directional arrow to take the lead.
And then she headed west.