AN: So with stories wrapping up, I'm putting this out there as the start of another of the two Caryl stories that will be filling in the spaces of the ones I'm working to finish at the moment.

This one is quite different than any that I've written before in that Daryl and Carol didn't meet at the quarry. Their meeting is going to be quite different from that. It is a Caryl story, though there is going to be mention of other relationships because of the way in which the story is structured and where we find Carol at the moment. There's nothing explicit, though.

I have an anonymous source who gave me some ideas about this one, and I think it will be interesting and different.

There will be mentions of violence, and some at least slightly explicit violence, so you should be aware of that. There is also mention/discussion of domestic abuse.

I hope you enjoy if you decide to read! Let me know what you think!

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

So many promises made by the world ended the same way, no matter how the story started. There would be darkness, it would be unavoidable, but ultimately it was only to be survived because, at the end of whatever darkness there was, there would be light. And the light would always mark the beginning of something...some new life, some new beginning, some long awaited promise land...something better at the end of the long suffered dark.

She was no stranger to the darkness.

Now she wandered in it, lost and alone. Sometimes she was searching, others she was simply existing. The promised light, it seemed, was nothing more than a lie because every time she'd opened her eyes lately to find it, she'd simply craved the return to the dark.

Mama...Mama...

The sound could penetrate even the blackest dark. That sound had been the light for the almost twelve years since she'd first heard the very first cries that precious soul had offered the world...so much more powerful then than the soft, sad sobs that accompanied the most beautiful word she'd ever heard spoken.

And the need to comfort and quiet those sobs was enough to pull her back, now, from the darkness into the light that offered none of the comfort she'd been taught to expect from it.

"Well, there you are!" His voice declared. Just the sound of it now was enough to turn her stomach and she might have done more than gag if there were anything at all left in her stomach to rid it of. "Thought we mighta lost you this time, but you fall for it every time, don't you? The recording...I can't blame you, though. It is a beautiful sound."

"Please?" She managed to spit out, the voice that said it no longer belonging to her. It belonged entirely, now, to the body that hadn't truly been hers for so long. "Please? Sophia?"

"Are you thirsty? I bet you're thirsty," he said.

She couldn't move most of her body. Her time spent wandering in the dark left her without a clear recollection of the time that had passed when she could. Her head was free from restraint, but she lacked the strength to move it.

He waved a water bottle inches in front of her eyes. The burning thirst in her meant even the suggestion of the liquid inspired her eyes to involuntarily spend some of their precious moisture in tearing over the prospect.

"Hey, don't cry," he said, wiping at her eyes with his hand. At this point she'd reached the point of barely even flinching at his touch. There was no need. There was no escape anyway. "I'm not a bad guy," he said, pouring a small trickle of the water that was so long desired that it tasted cool and sweet, regardless of its true characteristics. "A little at a time...no more of that nonsense of throwing up on me."

He trickled more of the liquid into her mouth.

Sometimes she rose out of the dark to the water, sometimes to bites of food fed to her like she was an infant, and sometimes to a syringe promising a quick sting and then the glory of a few moments of bliss where the ever present pain was dulled.

Because he wasn't a bad man.

And she would be expected to remember that when the next wave of pain crashed into her at his hands.

"Please don't hurt her...please..." She begged when her parched throat was dampened slightly. "Please..."

He smiled at her. He laughed low in his throat and she only flinched slightly when he gently wiped her face with the wet rag that had drank in more water than her thirsting body had.

"Please…" she begged again. It was the word that she said most often. She heard herself saying it now, even in the darkness.

There was the smile again. It was a mocking smile. It laughed at her suffering and then told her that she had no right to feel that way because he wasn't a bad man. He didn't want her to suffer.

"I don't want to hurt her, I really don't," he said. "And I haven't…yet…but you're going to have to cooperate with me. Do you think you can cooperate with me this time? End all this nasty business?"

He trickled more of the water into her mouth and she choked on it so he pushed her face to the side to keep her from asphyxiating.

He did these things to take care of her. He did them to remind her that he wasn't a bad man. He was keeping her alive. He wasn't letting her die.

And that's how she knew he wasn't a very good person at all, because at this point the most humane thing, at least in her opinion, would be to let her die if he wasn't going to let her go. Still, she held on because as he had her for the sick entertainment he seemed to find in torturing her, he would leave Sophia alone…and Carol could only hope that she was safe. She was, at this point, doing all that she could for her daughter.

"I don't know anything I didn't know before," Carol said.

He offered her more of the water.

"How could I? I haven't talked to anyone! I haven't seen anyone! I don't even know where I am!" Carol got out, starting to feel overcome with her own desperate situation.

"Nobody leaves Woodbury, Carol," He said, his voice still holding the oddly calm sound that he seemed to be able to give it with a moment's notice. The smile returned to his lips. Carol hated that she'd never seen through the smile before. She hated that once she'd thought this man was some kind of savior. Once she'd thought he was so charismatic, so charming. He was their Governor, and he would save them all from all the evil that was outside their walls.

But now Carol knew that they really needed saving from within.

"At least," he said, rubbing her face with his hand as though they were affectionate enough for such a gesture to be comforting to her, "nobody leaves and lives to tell about it. Tell me where he went, and tell me why he took what he took."

"I swear," Carol said. "I swear I don't know. I didn't know anything about it. Nothing. I don't even know what he took. Ed never told me anything…"

And it was true.

They had found Woodbury on accident. They'd left a group that they were with, just after their car had finally reached the end of the journey it would be willing to make with them, because Ed had some run in with one of the men. The man had tried to stop Ed from punishing Carol for not having the tent set like he wanted, not having it prepared for the moment he wanted to lie down, and Ed had fought with the man. The group had asked them to leave, then, and Ed had gladly done so because he wasn't going to have anyone telling him how to live his life or how to handle his wife and child.

They'd been caught in a swarm of Walkers not a day later. There had been far too many for them to fight off and Carol was certain that they were all going to die there, torn up by the creatures. But then, out of absolutely nowhere, some men had appeared and they'd cleared the Walkers. They'd taken Carol, Ed, and Sophia back with them to Woodbury.

And Carol had thought that she was in heaven, honestly. Sophia was going to school. Everyone in Woodbury worked and Carol took on every odd job that they needed her for. Ed was appointed some kind of right hand to the Governor. Because of his position, everyone looked the other way when Ed beat her. They didn't call attention to any of her injuries. Even if she needed to go to the clinic, it didn't matter. Everyone pretended they were perfectly normal and naturally occurring…and as odd as it may have sounded to say it, that made Carol happy, simply because it meant that the beatings weren't compounded by the irritation that Ed felt when he thought someone was "judging" him without knowing all that he suffered by simply putting up with her.

Truthfully, the beatings even lessened in frequency while they were there. Ed was happier than he'd been in a long time. As far as Carol knew, he loved his job. He loved Woodbury and he would have served the Governor in any way that he could. She never even asked what he did because that professional happiness, no matter where it came from, lessened the frequency and severity of the abuse that she suffered.

She had been grateful to the Governor and grateful to the people of Woodbury.

That was, until the day that Ed had gone for work and hadn't returned, even well past curfew. Carol hadn't thought much of it until it was time to turn down the lights. She'd put Sophia to be and she'd put Ed's food in the warming box to keep until he came, and she'd sat on her couch to work through some of the mending that she'd been given to "help out" a little more. Ed was often late, and there were times that he didn't even come home at all. All the women understood that these were always things that were tied to the well-being of their community and happened form time to time, and if your husband was someone who worked closely with the Governor? Well, they were likely to happen a lot more often.

She hadn't thought much about it at all until Merle Dixon called at her house, well past curfew. She'd hesitated to even open the door, knowing that was grounds in itself for punishment from Ed should he find out, but she finally had opened the door since Merle was another of the Governor's right hand men. He'd asked her if Ed was around, and she'd informed him that he wasn't. She assumed he must have been on a vacation day or something of the like, so she'd explained to him that Ed had gone into work and he simply hadn't come home yet. She'd said that, like most nights they were gone this late, she assumed he simply might not be coming in until the next day. He'd accepted her explanation of her husband's whereabouts and he'd gone on his way. She'd started getting herself ready for bed, now accepting her own explanation. Ed was working, he'd probably be gone overnight, and she should sleep since it was past curfew.

But then the Governor had come to the door. She'd opened the door without hesitation…it was the Governor. She'd half expected, and dare she think of it, half hoped, that he might be calling with some kind of tragic news. They'd been out on a run, they'd been doing this or that, and Ed had met his demise.

Carol was more than prepared to play the grieving widow for however long she had to…but she wasn't going to miss Ed Peletier when he was gone. Whatever love she'd had for him, and she was sure it had been there once, was long since dead.

But he'd come with questions, instead. They were questions that she couldn't answer. They were questions that, to some degree, she couldn't even understand. He wanted to know Ed's whereabouts, and he wanted to know something about what Ed had taken. Carol hadn't known anything about Ed taking a thing, but she'd offered the same explanation of his whereabouts that she'd given Merle Dixon.

And that's when she'd found out that the Governor hadn't come alone.

Men she'd trusted, men she'd dined with, men she'd thought of as, if not friends, at least good men that were looking out for her well-being and her daughter's well-being against the cruelty of the world out there? They'd all come in her home. They'd ransacked it. They'd tried to take her daughter, and when she'd tried to fight against them? They'd taken her too, though in her unconscious state she wasn't exactly sure, now, where she was.

She wasn't even sure if she was in Woodbury anymore.

All she knew was that he wanted information from her about Ed. He wanted information that she didn't have to offer him, and he would do anything he had to in order to get it.

And he had Sophia, or at least he said he did.

But she had nothing to fear every time she returned to the darkness. After all, there had to be some light at the end, and he was a good man.