Anything recognizable is the property of the appropriate owners. I do not make any claim to ownership, nor do I make any money from this.
Note: I have not seen past Season 4, Episode 9: After.
Warning: Actually, I don't have any warnings other than on sugar content.
This is my attempt at fluff.
Carol drove north in shocked numbness. When she told Rick that she had killed the two sickest members of the prison, she had never expected him to abandon her. Then again, she wasn't sure what she had expected. How do you punish someone for murder when they already live in a prison, society was pretty much gone, and every day was a fight for survival? She supposed that an emotional blow and banishment was pretty fair considering it was basically a death sentence. Besides, maybe Rick was right and no one did want her at the prison, even without her confession. Some small part of the grey haired woman argued that she knew at least one person who would care that she never came back, and the girls would probably miss her. But the larger, self-loathing part of her mind squashed her certainty down. Even if Daryl did want her, there was nothing he could do about it now.
So she drove and she survived, using every scrap of advice Daryl had ever given her on the road. Stay sharp. Stay silent. Stay quick. Keep moving. When in doubt, run. Carol arbitrarily picked north for more room to travel. After Woodbury, Georgia just seemed too crowded and she figured there might be something to the theory that a hard winter might slow the walkers. Besides, it was kind of refreshing to just pick up and leave her second life behind. No one she would meet would know her as a mousy abused housewife and Carol decided that she would be strong. She wasn't going to give Rick the satisfaction of laying down and dying.
There were some close calls where herds blocked her off from her car, and raiders tried to catch her, but for the most part Carol was fine. Surviving on the road was never boring, but she couldn't help resenting her nomadic lifestyle. She had lived through her first two lives by being a housewife, taking care of all the little things that no one else ever seemed to think of, and she had to be honest with herself that she rather missed the comforts of staying in one place. Carol missed having someone to talk to, someone she could trust to keep her safe. Not because she needed keeping, but because she was a social creature and the short haired woman couldn't even remember the last time she had spoken out loud. Silence was life after all.
Things changed, however, when two oddities came to the narrow woman's attention at practically the same time. The first thing she noticed was her favorite pants just didn't seem to fit right. She stared at the button that objected the strain it was under and wondered if she had managed to put on weight despite the constant stress of solo survival. When the group had been on the road after being driven off the Greene farm, they had a hard time finding enough food for everyone to be satisfied, and there was more than one night where they didn't have anything at all, so it hadn't been odd to lose a few pounds. And when they settled in the prison, there was enough to go around and relative security, yet she hadn't really regained any of the pounds she had lost on the road. But now, her belly had a discernible rounding.
The second oddity Carol noticed was while changing shirts. She gasped in surprise when her arm bumped one of her breasts and found it tender. It had been a while since she had taken any tumbles leaving her bruised and sore, but there was more than one reason for localized soreness. Almost laughing at the ridiculousness, Carol went through all the motions to check for lumps or bumps. Wouldn't that just be grand. Survive most of the population turning into ravenous undead things only to get cancer. But there was nothing out of the ordinary on either side so she cupped her small breasts and weighed them experimentally.
She didn't remember them filling her hands so well, but it wasn't as if she had much time for superfluous things like masturbation since she was on her own. Immediate needs like shelter, defenses, food, and water came well before personal fun. Getting dressed for her next foraging trip, Carol tried to put her changing body out of her mind. But if there was any downside of her solitary lifestyle, it was that there was an overabundance of time to think. The grey haired woman realized later that it had been almost two whole years since the Turn and she hadn't been a spring chicken then. Some quick math confirmed she was well into her 40's and that menopause wasn't out of the question. After all, with the stress and occasional starvation diet, periods were spotty at best, and nonexistent most of the time, so she wasn't sure when it may have started. Satisfied that she at least wasn't dying, Carol put it out of her mind.
At least until the nausea started.
Her lunch rebelled as she finished clearing the pair of walkers from a tiny backwoods convenience store. It had been so long since she had been sick from the stench of rotten flesh and spoiled produce, that it caught her completely off guard and she spent several moments bent over with her hands on her knees, just looking at the puddle of half masticated spaghettios between her boots. Once she was fairly certain the uncomfortable roiling in her stomach had calmed, the steely silver haired woman used a shelf to steady herself while she wiped her mouth and spat the remaining taste of bile and over processed tomato sauce away. When she looked up to check for any curious walkers, Carol actually laughed out loud. Sitting right next to her hand was a pregnancy test and even without a little plus sign to tell her for sure, she knew it wasn't menopause.
Carol collected a couple of boxes of the indicator sticks just in case, and emptied everything else useful she found in the tiny building into her van as a million thoughts whirled through her mind too fast to really examine. There was the instinctual panic that the world was too dangerous, and guilt over how irresponsible it was to bring another life into it, grief over her first lost child, and the overwhelming urge to drop everything and find the baby's father. But the grey haired woman was practical if nothing else and she quickly began planning how to keep her and her baby safe. Alone on the road, there was nothing she could do if something medically went wrong, and there was no way in hell that she would try to find another group now the stakes were so high. She resolutely refused to think about the father other than to hope that he was still alive and safe. All she could do was find someplace secure and well stocked for a minimum of effort before she couldn't defend herself.
So the lone woman found herself crossing into Tennessee, skirting around the east side of Chattanooga, eyeing any building she came across for the potential to become her nest. Some buildings were full of walkers, some were completely exposed, some held nothing of use to her, and so she kept following the edge of a long lake further away from the city. Carol passed a handful of communities before she found a building so completely out of place, she couldn't help having a closer look. It could hardly be called a building, it was so vast; bigger than any warehouse she had ever seen, built on a raised platform of land topped by chain link fence, presumably to protect against flooding from the nearby river. She couldn't see more than a handful of rather tiny windows considering the amount of wall she could see from the street, and oddly enough, no logos.
The grey haired woman cautiously drove towards the half closed gate, taking in the enormous parking lot containing only a few cars and fewer walkers. She figured it was some kind of manufacturing plant, and was about to turn away when a small sign on the fence caught her eye.
"Gate 3, Amazon employees only"
Carol's face lit up with realization. Amazon was only the biggest online retailer of pretty much anything someone could think of to buy, and some things they wouldn't have thought of. It was so popular, the giant company had built enormous fulfillment centers all over the country so they could always have the fastest and cheapest delivery times. If she remembered correctly, there was even some talk of immediate drone delivery for some items. Forget Walmart, Amazon was where she wanted to be, so the grey haired woman approached the building, looking for access points while keeping an eye on the walkers drawn in by the noise her car. There was only one door on the side of the building she had found herself on and a quick check revealed it was locked and very solid. No chance she was going to kick that one down.
As she pulled forward again, hoping to find loading bays that were easier to access, Carol was shocked to see dozens of walkers swarming behind her. The minivan she had acquired could mow down a couple of the shambling undead, but not a small herd. To her dismay, more walkers appeared in front of her, rapidly closing off her escape. Unwilling to lose such a find to the undead, the grey haired woman spotted the perfect solution. She pulled forward, as close to the wall as she could get and opened the sunroof before scrambling out the top with her main bag, the rest she could come back for later. Walkers groaned hungrily, spurred on by her appearance, but she jumped and snagged the bottom rung of an access ladder that went straight up the side of the building and to the roof. Grunting in effort, Carol pulled herself up and clambered to the roof.
Grateful that she wasn't as disturbed by heights as she was by small dark spaces, she heaved herself over the ledge of the roof, knife at the ready but found herself blessedly alone. Carol rested for a moment, unconsciously rubbing a hand over her belly until the heat of the sun and the desire to secure her find spurred her onwards. If the building looked massive from the ground, it was even more so on the roof. Flat asphalt punctuated by vent stacks and solar panels stretched practically as far as she could see so she picked a direction along the edge and started exploring. She made note of several more access ladders around the perimeter, found the loading docks were along the opposite side of the building, and discovered one surprisingly unlocked door into the colossal structure.
The pregnant woman hesitated at the door, however. For some odd reason, the old thought experiment about a cat in a box being both alive and dead came to mind. Until she opened that door, the facility below her would hold unimaginable treasures, but it could also be chock full of walkers and she wasn't sure if she was ready to know which. If the immense building wasn't as empty as she hoped, there would still be the small herd down below surrounding her car and no way off the roof. She pressed her hand to her slightly protruding belly, rubbing at the baby she knew was there, but couldn't yet feel. Mind made up to do whatever she had to for her child, Carol gripped the sun warmed metal of the handle and crept into the dark stairwell.
Blessedly, nothing was waiting to tear her to pieces in the dark stairwell and the grey haired woman found herself on an upper level balcony that overlooked the packaging floor two stories below. Hearing only relative quiet, Carol risked her flashlight to look around. The balcony extended along the length of the building and she could make out doors to what were probably offices. A few walkers were shambling around the first floor of the building, but they would probably be easy to take care of. She leaned over the railing to have a look and was rewarded by the shapes of shelves of product lined up below her. Carol rubbed her hands together in glee and set about checking the offices for a place to bed down. There was a lot of work in store for her and she already had a lot of ideas.
Author's Note: The show may have moved on from Rick's abandonment of Carol, but I sure haven't. To be honest, I haven't finished watching the show because of it, even though I know a lot of spoilers. Maybe if there was anything concrete between our favorite secret couple, but at least this way I can still pretend.