A/N – An experimental little one-shot. Hope you like. It's a little depressing, terribly AU, and would take place some time (years even) after where things are now on the show.

Let me know what you think? Thanks!

Disclaimer – Own nothing except for my addiction to TWD and Caryl. I wish I could own Norman Reedus for just one day… teehee.

The world was still turning, rotating on its axis like it had always been, but she felt like it had stopped… like everything had stopped, the world was stuck in a freeze frame, this was all a dream, a photograph she could tear up, throw away, and then this wouldn't be the reality of it all. She sat, her legs folded beneath her, at the gravesite. She was disheveled, her clothes torn and dirty, blood still dried on her hands. She hadn't bothered to clean up before the burial… it hardly felt worth it. Her face was still wet, the tears streaming in silence now.

She felt vaguely embarrassed over the display earlier. How she'd carried on, sobbing, sniveling, her face buried in the ground as the body had been lowered down into the hole that the others had dug. She had heard the whispers even through her own choking grief.

"Crazy."

"Pitiful."

"She did it herself, you know."

It was one loss too many. She'd been protected by a wall for so long… he'd helped to protect her, to build her walls… piling her desire to help out the group over the pain of every loss she'd – they'd – ever had before. She had been glad when the others had left her alone. When they'd all disappeared from the now-haunted place where the earth had been dug up and disrupted, they all went off to do their own thing, too concerned with their own lives or too wary of getting involved with hers.

She was struck by the irony of it all. In the most ironic way possible, the end of the world and the end of everything she'd ever had before had made her feel like maybe her life had just begun. And now it felt like how it probably should have from the beginning… cold, empty, alone. The others who were once her family now looked at her with caution, held her at bay. A loose cannon… the freak… it wasn't the first time she'd been looked at this way.

Her life had only just begun and now it was over… and she had been the one to end it. She had been the one to put it down… it… she couldn't think it as a person, as someone she'd loved, couldn't put a voice to it, a face to it… the rawness of memory burnt her throat and she started to sob again, leaning down and putting her forehead against the cool, loosely packed dirt on the grave. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears flow, let her shoulders shake. She could wallow in this… but only right now. She could wallow today, after it had just happened… and then she'd have to make a decision.

"I'm sorry," she choked out in between her rasping, shaky sobs. She knew it didn't matter. Sorry didn't bring the dead back to life… even in a world where the dead could keep on living after they'd gone the first time… sorry didn't make the dead deader, and it didn't make the dead alive again either. Dead was dead, even when you didn't want it to be.

They'd all lost someone; they'd all feel this loss for days, weeks, maybe months to come. But none would feel it like her. None could bear it like she could, like she was. The sobs were nothing. The sobs weren't weak… they weren't pitiful or pathetic… they were strength, liquid strength pouring from her, spreading out onto the dirt.

It was her strength that had done this, her strength that had put it down.

That had put Daryl down.

Daryl.

"Quit yer blubberin', woman." She could almost hear him say it. Six feet underground and still telling her to shut it. Only Daryl Dixon.

It had taken them months to truly find each other after Sophia had been found in that barn at Hershel's farm. She'd fallen in love with him over a flower, but it had taken him months before he got to a place where he could love her back. But love her he had… even now, after years of being together, of feeling his love all around her until this very terrible day, she couldn't understand how he could ever have loved her. She still felt unworthy of him and now he wasn't even here to show – never tell – her how worthy she was.

He had never been one to tell her how he felt – silly, woman – but he was a man of action, and action was always better than words… oh, that man could show her how he felt in ways that she'd never even dreamt.

Those eyes that said he loved her… those lips that kissed every inch of her…

He'd brought her back to life after she'd lost Sophia… absently the thought of Sophia made her think of Sophia's grave site, over a state away still at Hershel's farm, of Sophia's little funeral, the one that Carol hadn't attended.

It took time for Daryl to understand why she hadn't gone. To truly get that she couldn't handle it, she couldn't watch, she couldn't remember her little girl that way… as a walker.

It took time for her to realize how hurt he'd been by Sophia's death, how destroyed they'd both been but in such different ways. He'd blamed himself. He hadn't been fast enough, hadn't been good enough to find that little girl. It hadn't been anyone's fault though… it just happened. Sophia was just gone. And now so was he…

"He wouldn'ta wanted ya like this." The voice was coarse, gruff, reminiscent of the angry tone she knew so well from the man that now lay entombed beneath the ground. Carol turned her head to let her cheek rest on the dirt instead of her forehead. His legs were in her line of sight and she moved her eyes, tilting slightly, to travel her gaze up his body, past the midsection that showed his arms at his side – one arm ending in a steel contraption where his hand used to be.

Merle stood there, his face twisted up in a look of abject disgust. Leave it to Merle to be disgusted when she was a wreck.

"What the hell do you know, Merle?," she said, her tone dull, no emotion behind her words. "You never liked me anyway."

And it was true. He wouldn't deny it. Since he'd come back… partly of his own accord and partly of Daryl's… he'd made no bones about his dislike for his brother's "bitch-friend." He knew right away that she was the reason Daryl wouldn't leave the group like Merle wanted. And Merle wouldn't leave because Daryl wouldn't. So they were trapped there.

And it was her fault.

As far as Merle was concerned at least.

"Why're you even here? You can go now… you've got no reason to stay," Carol said, pulling her body up to a sitting position, swiping at her dirty, tear-soaked face with the back of her dirty, blood-stained hands.

"No one said ya had to be the one to shoot 'im," Merle ignored her question entirely. She wasn't surprised. Merle Dixon never did what anyone asked of him. If you ask the man a question, he'll just ask you one right back.

"Merle's like tha', that way. Ain't nothin' predic'able bout my brother." He'd said those words to her once, Daryl had; she couldn't remember if it was those exact words or just something like… but she remembered them all the same. Maybe it was when Merle had first come back, on the tail of a horrific battle with a man called the Governor.

Merle had been a part of the Governor's crew… involved but only for his own benefit, not for theirs. Merle didn't do anything for anybody else; Merle only did for Merle.

But kin was kin, and Merle had flipped sides for Daryl. He'd been certain that Daryl would leave with him after all the bodies had fallen. That was before he'd learned about Carol.

"He said I had to be the one to shoot him, Merle," Carol said softly, slowly like it was an obvious response to the stupidest statement in the world. It probably was the stupidest statement in this world, Carol thought; leave it to Merle to say the stupidest thing.

Maybe she didn't care for Merle any more than he cared for her.

It was Daryl that had managed to care for them both, managed to settle his brother down and keep him from killing T-Dog and Rick, managed to kiss her misguided fears away that Merle would take Daryl away from her.

"I ain't ever gonn' leave ya, woman. Ain't gonn' happen."

"It should have been me," she said then, dropping her eyes from Merle and down to the dug up area in front of her. "It should have been me."

He was just as silent as his brother and she didn't realize Merle had crouched down next to her until he spoke. "How'd that-a worked for 'im? If it'd been ya… how'd that-a helped Daryl?"

"He'd be alive," she said, laying a hand down flat on the dirt that covered him, touching the spot where she assumed somewhere below his face lay.

"Not without ya he wouldn't be."

She turned her head at his words, met his eyes and furrowed her brow.

"I can't do this without him," she spoke honestly. She was going to wallow today. Just today. And then tomorrow she'd decide. Decide if she wanted to live or if she wanted to die.

"Don't do it without 'im," Merle said, "do it for 'im… cause he cain't, cause he ain't 'ere to do it 'imself."

She didn't have to decide now. She knew that. She'd told herself she could take the day. She had the day to wallow, to grieve, to sit in her own filth and pity. And then she'd decide. But she kept her eyes on Merle's and she nodded. He wasn't Daryl. He didn't even like her. She hardly even liked him. But he was the only one there, the only one to sit at that grave with her, the grave that held the only man she'd ever truly loved, the only one to say those words for her.

And somewhere… Daryl would be glad, staring down at the two of them, his arm draped around Sophia, her little girl; keeping her girl safe just like he'd always meant to do.