They blend their way through the city at night, shadows along concrete. Atlanta is so much quieter than Daryl remembers. Sure, there's the occasional snarl of a walker but the cars, the lights… it's all so motionless. So succinct and terrifyingly hushed.

It's different between them now. He can feel it in the way she touches him—her nails dig into his skin in a desperate sort of way. Not like she's desperate for him. She's never been desperate for a man. Maybe she was desperate for Sofia once, and Mika and Lizzie, too, but now it feels like she's clawing around at the air, trying to grab onto something substantial. Trying to root herself.

He, alone, is not enough to stabilize her. It makes Daryl feel like he's failed.

(And deep down it feeds a seed of frustration with her.)

He follows her through the building at arm's length. He recognizes she is unstable. Not in that delicate, dollish way that she used to be. Now she's a ticking time bomb. She's wound. He sees it in her muscles and the tension lines on her face.

"You used to work here or somethin'?"

In the shadows, she swallows. "Or somethin'."

She didn't used to work here—that much is clear when they finally reach the secured housing quarters. She lived here, even if only for a day. She considered other possibilities. She saw beyond Ed, even if only for a moment.

Carol glances at him when she tells him this and her eyes make it seem like she thinks he's judging but he's not. It is harder than people think to leave something expected for the unknown. The threat of chaos must've been overwhelming to her; no job, no family, no support. At least with Ed she knew what to expect. She knew how to get by.

That must be what she's feeling now, he thinks, as she stands by the window and the moonlight frames her soft face. Chaos. All the time. He feels it too, though lessened since they split from the prison. Something's changed in him since losing Beth (and Sofia before that). As Carol desperately tries to reign it all in, he's found that he's suited better to pushing it outwards.

Control is imaginary.

All he can really do is try.

He kills the mother and child walkers almost immediately after Carol returns to the room. He wants to bury them but the earth here is concrete, all unyielding and ugly, so he thinks instead to burn them. But not now, not at night. Their light would be a beacon. He'll do it in the morning.

He returns to the living quarters to find Carol quiet on the top bunk. The room, still. Her breaths cascade in soothing repetition. Her being quiet reminds him of how she was at the beginning when Sofia was still around. All mousy and afraid. But she's far beyond that person now. She is beyond the fear—close to something intangible.

He's not sure what to do to ease the pain. Maybe there is nothing.

"You're staring," she says.

He straightens. "Yeah," he grits back. "An'?"

She sighs and the sound of it tugs both at his groin and the pit of his stomach.

"You tellin' me I can't?"

She shifts on the bed and her clothes rustle. Her body shudders forward, up, until her legs are hanging off the top bunk and she's staring down at him through the darkness. "Quit," she says.

"What?"

"You're looking at me like you used to."

"How's that?"

"Like you're sad and disgusted by me at the same time."

Daryl steps back a pace, running his hand through his hair. Yeah, he knows the look. In the beginning, sometimes she was so awkward he was disgusted. He couldn't stand her; couldn't walk away from her, either. He watched as she hid under mommy blouses and those pretty blue eyes, all the while being so raw underneath.

Carol is wrong in as many ways as a person can be and still get along in this world.

(But that was in the beginning.)

"Nah," he says. "I was jus' thinkin'… how good you look for bein' so tired."

A smile flickers across her face. She pinches her lips at him like she did when he accidentally threw the water jug at her and goddamn, he could really believe all the shit he preaches about moving on when she looks at him like this.

"You go on an' sleep now."

But she doesn't move. Her legs (tiny, she is so tiny) hang motionless. She looks especially delicate lately, soft in a way he hasn't noticed before. She suddenly looks like a woman he would fuck, instead of just protecting.

Some shit job he's done of protecting, he thinks.

"Hmm?"

But she just looks at him with those stupid, soft doe eyes, and eventually he steps closer to her. His shoulders reach above the bottom of the bunk, her knees brushing his chest. He touches her hand. She exhales and brings it to her face, kissing his palm.

The intimacy makes him want to recoil at first, but he doesn't. It's Carol. As much as he sometimes hates her, he can't put aside the image of him fucking her (fucking her good), driving all the pain out of her body and into the shadows around them. He feels like he could protect her that way. He could make her better, even if just in the moment.

He cups her face. She is thin and angular but undeniably beautiful. It's all in the eyes with Carol, it always has been. She wears her beauty in the way she hesitates and the flutter of her lashes when she examines people.

He gets her off the top bunk so they're pressed together, leaning against one of the bedposts. Their clothing rubs together. He can feel the shape of her waist between his legs. It feels chaotic, the two of them like this. They are a precipice broken and threatening to tumble away.

"I just…" she says, her fingers teasing either side of her temples, "don't wanna think…"

He knows the feeling.

And as much as he hates himself for it, he'd do anything to please her.

He lets his hand curl around the small of her back. She shuffles closer and his dick twitches. The feel of her against him is too much. He stoops, lowers his head. "Stay still." She's dirty and slick as sin. He doesn't want any ambiguity anymore. "Just give me a minute," he growls into her neck, and feels her shiver in response.

What they do is no better than fucking. There's little love in it. It's all grunts and thrusts and desperation. Tongues and sweat and dirt. After a couple minutes working his hand between her legs, the tension fades from her body and she acquiesces beneath him. Not giving up, but giving in. To him.

He feels a ridiculous amount of pride at being able to do that to her—make her forget everything and just be in the moment.

When he gets a strong rhythm going, her body starts to tighten around him. He angles deeper in response, leering into her mouth when she hisses in response. He's not wearing any protection but it's Carol and he wouldn't want anything but to feel her anyway.

People, he thinks, underestimate too much the power of the body. The way tension curdles the brain. That's why he's lived his whole life working his body to free his mind. In fresh air with the grasses whispering around him and fresh water smell carrying on the breeze. That's how he survived (all the chaos).

But what they have right now is the good kind of crazy. He could live the rest of his life with her whimpering beneath him, naked and dirty, like she's about to die.

I can make you forget, he thinks.

He lets go inside of her a moment after her own release and falls, panting, into her breast.

When he wakes up in the morning, she's dressed and lying on the top bunk. Her left hand curls by her face, the smooth skin of her cheek. She looks peaceful and he wonders if these are the only times she will ever be peaceful anymore—in sleep and in fucking.

He dresses quietly. Rays of sunlight slip through the open window, warming his skin. He takes only his knife, leaving his crossbow resting against the wall opposite her. (Something to watch over her while he's gone.)

It's different when he burns the walkers. He's not as immune to them as he was before but he still doesn't feel it on the same level as Carol. How could he ever feel anything on the same level as Carol? He wonders what it must be like to walk around with all that bound emotion in your chest, weighing down everything.

Heat flickers. He becomes aware of her presence next to him after he places the child into the flames.

"Thank you," she says.

He wants to reach out and touch her but doesn't. It's his job to make her forget, not make her feel more strongly.