This fic is for ochitduzon who requested I write a story with a bit more angst. I quite agreed since I've never been a big angst writer before, I'm excited to try out a new genre :)

Hope it meets expectations and that ya'll like it. (P.S., this will be a little out of regular character, but I was intrigued by the idea, so...yep!)

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She was maddening, this woman. One minute she was smiling at him and happy and bright as sunshine, making everything around her seem better, and then the next day she would be quiet, somber, thoughtful, not talking any more than she absolutely had to. Today was one of those days.

"Carol, you wanna go practice some melee moves?" he asked her. She was sitting on the steps leading up to his spot on the perch in cellblock C. She looked up at him with blank, tired eyes and shook her head. Daryl sighed, knowing something was wrong, and took a seat next to her. He hesitated for a moment before he nudged her shoulder with his.

"You alright?" he asked, genuine concern in his tone. "Ya been pretty quiet today. You're usually always ready to go bash some walkers in the face."

He intended to get a smile out of her like his rough comments usually did, but she just scoffed.

"Damn it, Daryl, can a person not have a moment's privacy around here?" was the reply he got, Carol's eyes didn't really hold anger like her voice did, they were still blank and sad.

The old Daryl Dixon would have stood up right then and there and left, not really giving a shit if she was hurting or not...but he couldn't do that now. Not now that he felt this way about her.

"Sophia?" he questioned carefully, not wanting to push her too far too quickly.

Her miserable nod was all the confirmation he needed.

"Sophia...and...life," she admitted.

Daryl nodded and felt silent beside her, knowing how important silence was sometimes. He sat there with her for a good amount of time, listening to her breathe, wondering what was on her mind, wanting to comfort her somehow but he was no good at that...but he brought his hand up and rested it on her knee anyway, giving her a light squeeze.

"Sorry I couldn't bring her back to you," he whispered.

"You did all you could," she replied simply, covering his hand with hers gently. She finally looked at him with a hint of life in her eyes.

"Wasn't enough," Daryl grumbled, her bad mood had already began rubbing off on him, damn it. He had been determined to make her feel better and here he was, dragging her down.

"Stop it, Daryl," Carol whispered, "Sophia's death wasn't your fault. It was just...life."

Daryl didn't like this at all. Carol sometimes went into bouts of sadness about Sophia, but they'd become rare and shorter and more easily fixed...but this, this was different.

"This ain't just about Sophia, is it?" he pressed.

"Can we just...go practice?" Carol asked, standing suddenly and heading for the weapons table. She grabbed her crowbar and nodded for him to follow as she left the cell block, Daryl had no choice but to follow her.

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Daryl watched Carol circling the walker he'd managed to bring into the yard alive and he flinched at the force that she whacked it's skull in. He'd seen that aggression before in her, when she'd put the pickaxe through Ed's skull back in the quarry, she'd gone way overboard with that...but he knew it was what she needed to get rid of the hate and anger. He wondered what was bothering her now.

"Ok, ok," he stated slowly, reaching out carefully to touch her shoulder. "It's dead, ya know?"

Carol sighed and nodded, halting her next blow mid-swing. She dropped the crowbar and stepped back to look at the damage she'd inflicted.

"Carol, damn it," Daryl was tired of being careful with her, "What the fuck is wrong with you? You're walking around like a...like a walker! You ain't talkin', you ain't listenin', something's wrong."

She looked at him thoughtfully and then shook her head.

"I'm fine," she whispered. Daryl growled and stepped up to her, gripping her shoulder's firmly, but not roughly.

"Why are you being this way?" he asked quietly, keeping what he had to say private. "You've been talking to me about everything lately, I don't think there ain't nothin' we don't know about each other. So why do you think you can't talk to me about this?"

Carol didn't answer, her eyes were focused on his hands on her arms and he let go immediately and ran his hand through his hair.

"Because," Carol replied finally, "This is one thing talking about will never fix."

Daryl understood that. He'd never told her all about his past either. She'd seen his scars though and she had an idea of what he'd gone through, but she never forced him to talk about it and he was glad, because there was nothing to say about it. So he just nodded and they walked back to the prison together in silence.

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Carol woke up the next morning feeling a whole lot better, all thoughts of Sophia and her life before this disease were gone and she smiled lightly as she saw sunlight streaming through the windows and into her and Lori's cell. She sat up and stretched her arms over her head before she slid out of bed and grabbed her toiletries and headed for the bathrooms.

She brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her short hair just to get it stick out in a less messy sort of way, took a quick shower and then she decided she was ready for the day, on her way out of the bathroom door she bumped into something, something solid and warm.

"Sorry," Daryl's voice reached her ears and she looked up at him with a smile.

"It's ok," she replied happily, "I'm making breakfast, don't go off doing your thing before you've eaten something."

"Wouldn't think of it," Daryl laughed, and as Carol moved to go around him she felt his hand close on her arm and he pulled her back and leaned down slightly with his eyes closed. "You smell really good."

Carol laughed out loud and gave him a light smack on the chest as she continued out the door. She found herself smiling the whole time she was cooking breakfast due to that comment and she couldn't help but shoot him little appreciative looks throughout the morning, knowing he saw them by the replying quick smirks and the way he looked away quickly.

The way he looked at her sometimes, it made her nervous. He would fix her, sometimes, in that icy blue stare of his like he was trying to convey a million messages to her at once and she would feel something, something she hadn't felt since high school...a warm sensation in her chest, a tightening of her gut. She chalked it up to nerves, knowing what Daryl Dixon was capable of, knowing he had the ability to break every bone in every body in this group if he wanted to. He was intimidating...and yet...she wasn't truly afraid of him, she knew he wasn't like that.

Today he seemed to be looking at her a lot, every time he walked through the cell block with Rick, each time she passed his post outside, he would give her that sideways look that was full of some sort of emotion she couldn't place. It was like he was calculating something.

He watched her carefully, all the time, never letting her out of his site if he was in the same area. It was disconcerting sometimes, but even so, it was comforting to know he was watching out for her. Ed used to watch her...but it wasn't the same. Ed watched her to make sure she wasn't doing anything he didn't agree with, anything that could possibly make her happy, or anything that would hint at her trying to leave him. His eyes had lacked the blue warmth that Daryl's held, lacked the comfort that Daryl's exuded when he sat next to her in the dark during night watches, lacked the honesty Daryl's contained when they spoke together about the uncertain future they faced, and lacked the softness Daryl's had when they would get a few moments alone and they would flirt ridiculously.

No, nothing about Daryl reminded her of Ed anymore. She use to think so, but when they'd left Merle in Atlanta, Daryl had changed drastically. He was still quiet and careful and brooding and dangerous...but not with her, not when they were alone in the guard towers on watch, not when they would bump into eachother in the hallways and laugh and joke about watching where they were walking. And he'd shown how changed he was to each and every one of them in a way. Rick trusted him without question, T-Dog had looked past his original thoughts that Daryl was racist and the two of them were pretty chummy, he helped Lori many times by bringing her prenatal pill on their runs or a stray pack of diapers, he still teased Glenn about being Asian but he did so with a joking, friendly vibe, he gave Carl room to be mature and grow and do things for himself...and he'd done more for Carol than anyone in her entire life.

So when it came into Carol's mind one day that she loved Daryl Dixon, she didn't push the thought away, but she kept it to herself. Love wasn't something that ended well, it changed people, made them do things they wouldn't normally do. Look at what her marriage had become. Ed hadn't seemed to be the man he'd turned into when she met him, when she decided she loved him. He'd changed so quickly, turned cruel, mean, and heartless...she'd done that to him. Love was dangerous.

She was thinking about this as she poured cornmeal into a mixing bowl, in the kitchen they'd discovered and cleared last week. It was close enough to the cell block that she was able to cook dinner by herself and she was grateful to have time to herself each night as she cooked. She loved people, of course, but sometimes even the most social people need a little space.

"What's on the menu?" Carol jumped and a little of the powdery food missed the bowl and landed on the counter. She spun around and saw Daryl standing in the doorway, grinning as he realized he'd surprised her. "Sorry, didn't mean t' scare ya."

"No, you...just didn't hear you come in," Carol stated quickly, brushing the spilt cornmeal onto the floor to sweep up later. "Um, I'm gonna pan fry those squirrels you shot today. And maybe some cornbread."

"Sounds good t' me," Daryl said easily, walking to the counter in the middle of the kitchen and pulling himself onto it to sit and watch her. This irked Carol, though she wasn't sure why.

"You don't have to watch me, Daryl," she said, a little snappish. "I promise, I'm not going to poison anyone."

"Never said ya were going to," Daryl said slowly, sounding a little unsure. Carol looked over her shoulder at him and found he was looking at her with a concern squint. "Why d'ya always think I'm waiting for ya to do something wrong? Ever cross yer mind I might just like watchin' ya in general?"

Carol's hands froze, in fact her whole body froze, at those words. Why would he like watching her? Tired, gray, skin and bones...she was nothing special, she never had been. Ed had told her over and over how worthless she was besides being able to cook, told her sex with her was boring and unsatisfying and more of a chore than anything. It didn't stop him from taking her nearly every night, hard, cruelly, painfully...he'd brutally used her as a tool to get off and then he'd leave her in a crying, bruised heap. Every time she remembered his hissing growls in her ears, the sweat dripping off him as he pounded her, the iron grip on her wrists as he held her down...she felt dirty, broken, nasty. No way was there anything about her that any man would want, unless it was just to get some sort of sick satisfaction out of her body which had become too used to the abuse to even fight back anymore.

Was that what he wanted from her?

"Carol?" Daryl's voice was closer this time and she flinched away from the warmth of his breath on her neck. She felt his hand on her arm and she turned quickly to look at him with questioning eyes, he was looking down at her with concern in those blue depths. "Are you alright? I didn't mean that to sound creepy or nothin'."

She wanted to tell him that she loved him right then. She wanted to admit it once and for all and just see how he would respond. She wanted to touch his weatherworn, handsome face and assure him that she was flattered. But those were responses that had earned her nothing but hurt in the past...and she wasn't ready to risk that happening again.

"I know," she said instead of all the things she'd rather say. She turned back to the bowl of cornmeal and started rolling the bits of squirrel in it, her back to Daryl as she tried to ignore the fact he was standing there, probably eyeing her with a confused expression.

She heard him walk out, finally, and it was only then that she let the tears out to roll down her cheeks onto the floor at her feet. She couldn't give him what he wanted...she wasn't capable of it anymore.

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So, there's the beginning. Out of cannon character, I know, but I'm gonna see where it goes none the less.

Whatcha think of the start, ochitduzon?