A/N So I spent about 6 hours over the last 2 days writing a bunch of Carol-centric fics. Nothing has had time to be polished. Nothing has been beta checked but with the new episode coming out tomorrow I know that if I don't post them now I never will. Looking for someone willing to let me run a few Carol facts past them to make sure my memory isn't faulty.
Crossing the Rubicon
Daryl was so far downstream from Alexandria – from any of the settlements – Ezekiel couldn't have run into him by chance.
And apparently, he was planning to stay a while because he dismounted and hitched his horse to a nearby tree.
Daryl didn't say anything as Ezekiel took in the sights of his one man camp with its barbed wire fence and tin can alarm system.
Ezekiel spoke first, but he kept his opinion of Daryl's less than regal setup to himself. "You can't still really be hoping to find Rick – not after all this time. Not alive."
His brother Merle – well, his brother Merle minus one hand - had turned up months after he had been left for dead. Andrea had turned up almost a year after they had thought her gone. Hell, he'd once buried somebody and put Carol's scarf up as a grave marker before coming across her by then actually half dead trapped in a room not five hundred yards from where everybody else was.
But Daryl didn't feel the need to tell that to Ezekiel. Instead, he told him. "Walkers can't swim, but they don't stay in the water forever."
To that Ezekiel nodded in understanding.
"After we left Atlanta, after the CDC, we were stopped on the highway. Walkers came through. Carol's daughter got scared."
Ezekiel said her name softly, reverently. "Sophia."
Daryl gave a nod and continued. "She ran off. Maggie's father had a farm. On the farm, there was a barn. One of his men used to collect the walkers. Kept them in there."
A shadow came over Daryl's face as he explained why he couldn't give up on the search for Rick. "I'll never forget the look on Carol's face when Sophia came out of that barn. The sound she made when she saw her. The sounds that she made when Rick …" Daryl looked down. "When Rick did what he had to do. Michonne doesn't deserve to ever go through that. Little Ass Kicker doesn't deserve to see that."
"You're a good man, Daryl."
Daryl shrugged off the attempt at a compliment. If he were really been a good man, Rick wouldn't even have been on that bridge.
Ezekiel wouldn't let him shrug it off. "You're a good man now and you were a good man then. Carol told me what happened. How you held her back. How you kept her from running to her daughter. From joining her. How you held her while she cried her heart out. How you tried to comfort her."
Daryl was surprised, maybe even a little uncomfortable that Ezekiel knew that.
"She said you were the only one that kept looking for Sophia. Who didn't get distracted from the search, who didn't give up. Carol will always be grateful to you for that. You two have history together that I could never – would never - hope to have with her."
Daryl didn't say anything in response to that. This had to be the longest conversation he had ever had with the ruler of the Kingdom, but he still didn't know why the other man was here.
Until he did.
"I finally got Carol to agree to set a date for the wedding."
tbc
A/N Thanks for taking the time to read & review.
