Author's note: So, I was inspired at some point somehow on my lengthy drives to and from work of late to write a companion fic to "Never Give Up. Never Surrender." This one will be entirely from Rick's point of view, so we'll get to see everything we didn't see in NGUNS. That's something that bothered me despite how much I loved how NGUNS was turning out as I wrote it. Kat-valkyrian and I had talked a bit about a few scenes when I was frustrated by not being able to explain things from Rick's PoV and eventually those discussions led to this. So here we go. I promise that even though this is a retelling of sorts, it's really not. It's basically going to go over scenes that weren't brought out in NGUNS because Daryl wasn't aware of them and things I just didn't cover because it didn't flow in that telling.

They were a day, possibly two from Terminus. Rick let his head rest back against the wall he sat against and licked dry, chapped and cracked lips. It had been a few days since they'd been forced to leave the first secure shelter they'd come upon after…

Rick picked his head up and let it drop back against the wall with a dull thud. It was gone. All of it. Everything they had worked for. Every sacrifice they had made. The lives they had lost even before the Governor had come a knockin'. All of it had been for nothing in the end. Judith…

Again Rick picked his head up off the wall and let his skull bounce none too gently off the concrete. The burn in his eyes was an acidic thing, drenching the inside of his nose with the same sting. He sniffled a little, hoping the noise wouldn't wake either of his companions. Carl, thankfully, seemed undisturbed. He was curled up close to Rick's right hip with his back pressed into the same wall Rick was supporting himself with. Michonne lay to Rick's right, half curled on her side and with her back to the wall as well.

God, but he was thankful for her. He could barely hold himself together, and Carl, no matter how capable the boy thought he was, still needed a steady, guiding hand. Right now, Rick's hands shook like he was having a seizure both in the literal and metaphorical senses. His mind was fractured, and his ability to stay conscious was limited even though he genuinely hadn't caught an actual wink of sleep in something like three days. Nothing but small snippets of oblivion since he'd woken from what Carl had believed was a coma. Even keeping track of the days was hard when all he could see in his mind's eye were flashing images of Herschel's head being half-severed from his body, a Walker creeping up on Daryl up the hill, and the Governor's sickly delighted face as he attempted to beat the very life out of Rick's body.

Most of his life after that was a blur to the moment he sat in now. It wasn't beyond his understanding that he may have suffered some serious level of concussion and that his body had yet to recover from the trauma completely. If it ever would. He wouldn't be holding his breath on a full recovery with the state of his luck in the last week. As if on repeat, those same repetitious images flashed through his mind's eye again: Herschel's sad, resigned smile full of forgiveness as if to say "Rick, you did the right thing. I forgive you." Followed by the Governor as he raised his fist for what had to have been the twentieth time, the blow slamming Rick's head to the right. Just passed the bus, he'd seen Daryl duck behind an old set of office cabinets, and had in that brief glimpse caught sight of a Walker shambling up behind him.

Rick picked his head up and dropped it back against the wall again.

He wasn't a fool. Not completely. Daryl was dead. Herschel was dead. Judith…

"Dad."

Rick lowered his chin, Carl's soft voice stopping him from letting his head drop back against the wall again by dragging his attention from his own painful thoughts. The scrape of denim and rubber soles on the concrete floor of the small car repair shop they had hunkered down in for the night was loud in the stillness of the dark around them. Rick almost shushed the boy, but Michonne wasn't indicating that she was disturbed, so he simply watched the shape of his son shift about in the shadows. Carl settled back against the wall beside his father once he was sitting up. Rick's old uniform Stetson sat on the floor between Carl's feet now with the change in position.

"Everythang okay, Carl?" he murmured and finally pulled his eyes down to his hands where they hung limply over his drawn up knees. His voice sounded like he'd been screaming for days.

Carl sighed and rolled his head against the wall until he was mostly looking in Rick's direction. Rick caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, but didn't turn to meet Carl's eyes. He doubted he'd be man enough to meet his son's eyes for a good long while.

"No," Carl mumbled into the dark and folded his arms over his stomach.

The silence stretched for several long moments before Rick finally pressed with, "What's wrong?"

"You weren't even this bad after Mom died."

Rick winced. Lori, who had died too early even for this world because Rick had failed to protect her. Just like he had failed to protect Judith. He'd barely started getting to know his baby girl and now she was gone from him just like her mother. Farther away than she would have been even if she had never been born because he'd held her, kissed her brow and rocked her to sleep, and now he would never feel that again.

"You were bad," Carl continued after a thoughtful moment. "I mean, you were seein' Mom's ghost everywhere. And c'mon, that's pretty bad. You even believed that she was leadin' you t' somethin' important outside the prison fences. If Daryl hadn't showed up when he did-"

Carl fell suddenly silent. Rick must have made some kind of noise to cause Carl's teeth to click like that, and he cursed his inability to reign in his emotions, but with his head pounding and his mind so fragmented that he could barely focus on one thought at a time he really couldn't even blame himself.

"We need to look for the others," Carl murmured after a moment, taking his eyes away from Rick and staring off into the darkness around them. Rick gnawed on his lower lip. "Michonne made it out. We did. Maybe Beth and Maggie and Glenn…and Daryl made it out alright."

Rick felt the distressed noise leave his throat this time, and he brought both hands up to press trembling fingertips into his eyes. Daryl was dead. Judith was…

"I'm not blind you know," Carl pointed out very unhelpfully. "Or deaf."

"You wanna tell me what you're gettin' at, or are you jus' gonna keep pointin' out the obvious?" Rick's leg was shaking, bouncing up and down with nervous, pent up energy. He immediately regretted his words and tone, looking away and wiping hard at his mouth with one very unsteady hand, the gesture useless for wiping away the dry bitterness lingering there. Carl didn't seem put off by Rick's little outburst, and Rick was more than a little thankful that his boy was so incredibly intuitive for his age.

"I can't remember a time when Mom wasn't angry at you," Carl said at last. "Even before you got shot. I didn't understand what she meant when she would talk to Kathy down the street or Aunt Jane and say things like 'I don't even know if we're in love any more. Maybe we are. I really don't know.' But looking back on it, the way you were with Shane all the time…I think I see what she meant."

"Mind enlightenin' me a little more than that, Carl?" Rick murmured, keeping a check on his temper this time even though his muscles were tense across his shoulders, and his jaw was clenching a little tighter every minute. It was hovering in the back of his splintered mind that this was something he already knew, but that no one else should know.

"I think she thought you were having an affair with Shane…or, at least, that you wanted to."

Rick's blood went instantly cold, freezing in his veins and locking his muscles up to the point that he couldn't even speak. His eyes felt wide, or at least as wide as they could get considering he could still hardly even see out of the one of them. Not that he would have been seeing anyway with the way his mind exploded with long suppressed thoughts, arguments and concerns. 'Get a beer or two in you,' Lori's ghostly voice hissed at him, and he could just see their old kitchen in the heat of summer, feel the light breeze on his face and neck through the open window. 'And it's like you forget I'm even here! It's all about Shane.'

Carl seemed oblivious to Rick's sudden distress and added, "Daryl's a much better pick than Shane."

"What makes you think…?" If his voice had sounded horrible before, it sounded like he'd been gargling ground glass now.

"You call for him in your sleep all the time." Carl finally looked away then and let the back of his skull rest against the wall. "You called for him all the time while we were out on the road after we lost the farm. Any time things got tough, you'd just glance back and call for him. Then we aimed to clear the prison, and you started calling his name even more."

Jesus, how long had he actually been out of his mind?! He couldn't remember ever yelling for his former partner after the night he'd put a knife into the man's chest, but Carl wouldn't lie about it. Not now. After everything. "Shane and I were friends for a long…"

"Not Shane. Dad. Daryl."

Rick fell silent and closed his eyes. "Carl…"

Really he didn't know what to say. He'd struggled with all of this before the Turn, but once the dead had started to rise it hadn't seemed important in the face of his family's survival. In fact it had completely faded into the back of his thoughts. Sometimes, when he'd catch a glimpse of Shane in just the right moment, before the man had turned into a rabid dog, he'd feel it in his chest. Something that might have been if things had gone down a different path, but even that was overshadowed by the connection that he could just see hanging in the air between Lori and Shane, no matter how much Lori had tried to refute it. It wasn't until Daryl had stepped up that night on the farm and taken over the responsibility of putting Dale out of his misery that Rick had felt those stirrings again.

And then everything had gone to shit, and all of Rick went right back into ensuring his – much larger – family's survival. Now Shane and Lori were both gone. Judith was gone and Daryl…

He could feel the whine of his breath in his throat, but the noise abruptly ceased when Carl reached out and laid a firm hand on his arm. "I'm sure Daryl's alive, Dad," the boy murmured and shook him a little bit. "Dad?"

"Carl," Rick croaked and wiped at his mouth again. "I don't think anyone could have made it outta there. We were lucky t' get out ourselves. How-"

"Because he's Daryl," Carl interrupted. "He's probably out there lookin' for us right now."

A tentative silence fell between them. Rick just closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the wall again. He was so tired, and there was no way he could sleep. Carl was pretty capable of taking care of himself these days, but the soul-wringing need to watch over his son, the last truly important person in his life, just wouldn't let him lose enough awareness for rest.

"At least it isn't someone like Andrea," Carl offered after several long moments ticked by. "She was pretty, but she was kind of a bitch."

"Language," Rick croaked before he could really stop himself. Carl completely ignored him.

"I'm cool with it…" the boy murmured almost as if he were speaking to himself. "You being in love with Daryl, I mean. I think he loves you too. It's just repressed under all that hillbilly prejudice."

"Where in god's name did you learn t' talk like that?" Rick knew he sounded dumbfounded more than unhappy even through the frog in his throat.

He could hear the shrug in Carl's words. "Everybody talks like that these days, Dad. Even the little old ladies from Woodbury."

"I must have had my head buried real deep in the sand then…" Rick mumbled and Carl laughed softly, leaning into Rick's shoulder. Rick grinned a bit, but refrained from laughing. His ribs were less sore than they'd been, but they were still pretty tender. He was grateful that heavy bruising was the most of his concerns aside from whatever had caused him to go comatose while they'd stayed in that house. The bullet wound in his leg was surprisingly minor.

After several long moments, Carl spoke again. This time, though, his tone was less uppity. It was instead softly serious, like he really hoped that his father was going to hear him and not just listen. "When we find Daryl, you should tell him. Even if you don't tell him the whole truth about your feelings, you should at least tell him you love him. I think he needs that too."

Rick mulled that over for a moment and then tipped himself into Carl's shoulder more, pressing into the rail thin body leaning against him. When he tipped his head, he was just able to rest it against the top of Carl's unruly mop of hair. "Okay."

"You'd better."

"I will."

"Good."

Rick let the silence settle between them for just a second before he added, "You need a hair cut."

"You're one t' talk," Carl chuckled. Rick grinned. Neither of them moved for the rest of the night.

TBC…