So, its the holidays! I have a few weeks before I traipse off to uni and I need something to get me out of the bleakness of being unemployed and bored and get me into the routine of writing again. :) I've been watching The Walking Dead lately and I really wanted to write some Caryl (I really do hate all the other romantic relationships in the series, they seem so pointless) so I'll throw my love of this couple into a word document and see what comes out. ;)

By the way, I have a habit of stealing the chapter titles from elsewhere. I don't own those names, so just ignore. It keeps me focused on what I want to get across in that chapter. :) I also love introducing stuff with a song. Its also a habit.

OKAYS! Enjoy. Please Review!

Prologue

(I'm a man's man, in a man's world

But you make me blush like a little girl

I wanna pick you flowers and buy you stuff

You're like cold beer: can't get enough)

To Daryl, Merle was everything. He hunted with him, fought with him and spent his every day trying to make his life better. Never had he expected to look in the warm, brown eyes of another being and love them in the way he loved him. The short 'mucky brown' hair and constantly splodgy red skin of his face made him appear religiously dirty and devilish, a trait Daryl saw in himself. In fact, he was the spitting image of him, except where Daryl's eyes had acquired deep wrinkles from years of staring down a crossbow, Merle's were clear and baby-fresh with hardly a line except the creases when he shared a wide, melting smile with his father.

Merle JR had been born around five years ago, they thought though they had no way to tell the exact time or date. If it was up to Carol their son would've had a more sophisticated name but she understood how much it meant to Daryl and in a way she was honored that he thought so highly of the little tyke. When she had become pregnant it was more than her partner could manage, he had thrown himself into a tantrum but after the short period of initial shock came a nine-month bout of complete and utter devotion to the bulge on her stomach and the safety of the baby.

For a while after the bouncing, cheeky baby boy was born Carol would have vivid, wonderful dreams. In these dreams, Merle and Sophia played idly at she and Daryl's feet while they all sipped ice tea and ate the fish and woodland creatures that Merle had no doubt caught with his father that day. The world was warm and joyful again in her dreams, her old family home was still standing, there was and had never been an 'Ed' and their old neighbors were always popping in with baskets of flowers or toys for the children. In her dreams Sophia was the beautiful twelve year old girl she had lost all that time ago and Daryl was just how she had met him- tall, dark, handsome and extremely grubby but he had that new found love in his eyes for her. They would hold hands on a wooden deck chair built for two or she would simply stand behind him, wrap her arms around his shoulders and they would watch the sun set as a family.

Often, after those dreams, she would awake in the uncomfortable one-man caravan in which she, Daryl and Merle were temporarily and claustrophobically living, and she would sob until she woke one of them up. The pain of suddenly being wrenched back into reality was hard. She had to deal every day with the fact Sophia would never play at their feet with her half-brother, they would never be able to spend time watching the sun set and they would never really be safe as a family. Every time Merle became frightened and began to cry, it could bring Walkers down on them, she feared for their lives whenever Daryl insisted on taking his son into the woods to hunt with him and she lived in constant dread for her own safety and for the two boys she would die inside without.

Daryl was now beginning to earn the features of an older man, his hairline receding and his face growing more and more creased by the day. The seven or eight years since the outbreak started had not been kind to him. His callous and often cracked hand would rest roughly on her side as they embraced to comfort each other into sleep, meaning even the gentle, tender moments with him were flawed. She would caress the deep scars on his side and look into those yellowing but beautiful brown eyes and believe he was her salvation, her mystic alter of life into which she poured every morsel of her love, but he was also the one thing that made her weak, faltering... Powerless to resist those wild charms. Without him she was nothing.

It was a sunny September morning, Carol decided. She hadn't seen a calendar for a number of months, perhaps a year or more, but she expected from the bitterness in the air that she couldn't be far wrong. Dale always emphasized the importance of keeping track of time but until Merle was born and she wished she could track his birthdays she hadn't seen the relevance. She herself must be getting on in years, she noted, she must be approaching her fifties. Somehow Daryl was almost ageless. The yellowing grass had begun to grow too high outside the caravan, so she had made it her mission that morning to pull up some of the foliage while her boys slept in. Thoughts had kept her awake that morning. They had been spooked the night before when they heard loud banging sounds from outside but it turned out to be a wild dog that had followed the scent of Daryl's latest kill to them. The menu for that evening would be wild dog, she had been told, as her partner had instinctively shot it dead, inspected it for wounds and deemed it suitable to eat.

She had owned a dog once, she remembered. She had bought the young dog to protect her home from an alleged prowler living in the neighborhood and she thought it would be beneficial to Sophia to learn about animals and pets. It was a German Shepherd called Ruff, named by her then very young daughter of course. Ed had beaten it to death one night when he came home drunk, enraged and violent and she had locked him outside. Ruff had been chained up outside and took his master's wrath; a blow which knocked its teeth out then a blow that left the poor animal bleeding from the brain, spilling blood onto their cobblestone-effect pavement. Ed fell asleep in that blood and buried the evidence of his slaughter the next morning, claiming the dog had run away in the night. Carol had seen the whole thing from her first story window.

This dog wasn't a German Shepherd, it was a horribly inbred mutt that was nothing more to her partner than an easy meal. She almost wished he had saved it, maybe kicked the beast and let it run away- she remembered a time when she would've been horrified to see the slaughter of such an animal, but falling in love with a poacher had essentially driven that from her. She had to admit, it would be offputting cutting the thing up to serve later though.

She poked her head in through the door after spending a good half hour ragging weeds from the ground with all her strength. The steps up to the door were visible now and if any other animals or worse wanted to creep around their caravan they would make great crashing noises knocking over the tin cans under their tin box of a home. A great improvement. She slowly walked over to Merle whose tiny, grubby five-year-old frame was wrapped in a cloth sheet and one of Carol's old denim dresses to keep him warm. Once a few years ago when Daryl had gone out hunting he had stumbled across an upturned porshe, its victims missing, and he had found a luminescent pink suitcase in its back seat. He brought it back for Carol and the clothes screwed up within had fit her tiny frame perfectly. Each item was more beautiful than the next- Gucci shirts, Armani pants and a side order of tough, durable work clothes each with a fine bottle of perfume or shampoo or some other luxury wrapped in the sleeve or cuff. She assumed whoever had left this suitcase was a rich industrial woman or some spoilt laborer who no doubt wouldn't need these delicacies any more. Changing out of her dresses and into sweats, jeans, jumpers and even fine clothes marked the end of the oppressive reign of Ed's dresses ('you look better in dresses darlin', why don' you get out of them jeans and put som'n on to please your husband?') and the introduction of Daryl's new, liberated survivalist Carol ('ya need somethin' that keeps ya'll from the cold woman. Get outa' that crap and in'a something that'll keep ya safe.'). She had cut each dress up in turn, bar her one favorite, and she had fashioned them into all sorts of things- pillows, blankets, cloths, hoods even a linen hat for Merle to keep the sun off his tiny head.

The one thing she had retained from her old life with Ed was the one dress he only allowed her to wear in the house. She admitted it was a dress that tied in to a history of violence and sexual harassment by her husband, but she also could tell Daryl loved it. The neckline was deep, scooping into what little cleavage she had and revealing the lace hem of the bra she wore only on 'special occasions'. The waist was tight, cinched and flattered her small child-like figure by sucking on her stomach and pouting at her hips. The dress stuck out at a sort of awkward angle when it reached her motherly hips but then tucked itself back in, kissing her thigh and clinging to her slender legs. When she had first worn it in front of her partner they had just left Rick's group and were setting out a new home in a run down old mill. She had padded out like a lynx onto the grass outside the front door where Daryl was chopping firewood and as soon as their eyes met his jaw fell to his knees. Their relationship had been new then, and he had never had a real chance to admire her body without the annoying rags of clothes Ed had made her wear.

He had snaked one rough hand around her waist and yanked her to him as though he couldn't resist the warmth of her body on his any longer. He had taken one hand and run it down the side of her waist, then her hip and he slowly made his way down to her thigh. His eyes spoke volumes- the fire within them told her she had done good, he liked this feisty new Carol and he wanted to see more of it. Much more. She led him inside giggling.

She had never been happier or more in love.