A/N: I've missed writing for this story so, so much! Please enjoy. Olive and her family belong to me.

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Olive sighed, her chest now moving vertically as she reclined on her bed, eyes cast up at the ceiling. A tea-length black dress clung to her figure in loose folds. Lying beside her was Grant, his cropped locks nicely styled and a black suit shaping his handsome features.

Burying Olive's mother was a bleak affair for them and now they required comfort, seeking it out in each other.

Grant played with her fingers, something that had comforted him since they were children.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, turning his head to look at her.

Olive blinked and paused prior to speaking her answer. "I guess," she muttered.

"You're lying. You always hesitate when you're about to lie."

"Mom's dead. How can I be alright?"

"It was just her time, Ol."

"Maybe." She looked at him this time. "I know she wasn't your mother, but she was mine and Lacey's. Were you sad at all today?"

Grant nodded, glancing down at her fingers, still loosely grasped in his own. "I was sad for you." His eyes flickered up towards hers, a deafening seriousness in them now.

Olive sensed his meaning and she shook her head, sitting up and pulling her hand free from his. "Grant, don't."

"Don't what? I haven't done anything." He sat up, too, his legs draping over the side of her bed.

"Your implications are enough. You know it's not like that - you know that we aren't like that."

He paused. "Is it so wrong for me to at least suggest it?"

Olive turned her head, nodding slowly. "Yes. We've known each other since we were small, but I don't feel like that about you - I never have."

"You say that, but I know you have the capacity to feel that way about me if you wanted to."

"But I...I don't want to."

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This memory flashed behind Olive's eyes as she and Daryl were bolting through the forest. They were, at present, fleeing a rather large and hopelessly scattered mob of Walkers. Each was breathless, but there was nothing to be done. It was either run until their hearts gave out or stop and be eaten by the hungry undead.

How long had they been running? A few hours? A day? The time for their running was, in all likelihood, closer to a twenty-four-hour period than they were willing to admit.

"I think they're clearin' out," Daryl said as they rushed into a meadow. There were no Walkers in sight and the growls and snarls were getting fainter and fainter.

"Right there," Olive called to him, gesturing straight ahead at a patch of grass between the higher sections. She entered that area and collapsed to her back, Daryl soon following suit.

Each lay in the drenching sweat coating every inch of their flesh, their chests heaving and their hearts pounding so quickly that the two were certain they would burst. As they lay there, the wheezing sounds of Walkers came and went, each of them remaining silent until they were certain that the small herd had passed.

They made camp that night, neither of them uttering a word as they built a small fire on which Daryl roasted a squirrel. They were forced to share said squirrel between them, seeing as they weren't planning on sticking around - a more permanent situation would've allowed for them to build traps. Instead, each half-heartedly made due with the small amount of meat they were blessed with.

So many times that night, Daryl and Olive each opened their mouths as if they wanted to say something, but silence was locked in the spaces between them, the farthest distance between their bodies since the night they'd met.

It was almost as if neither knew quite what to say, given the aftermath of what had happened at the prison. Olive understood that Daryl was feeling quite guilty over something, and Daryl knew that Olive blamed herself for ever even showing up at the prison with Daryl.

A sleepless night was met with a humid, dewy morning. Daryl was quick to pack things up and Olive was hot on his heels, raring to go as soon as she had pulled her hair back in an elastic.

The foreboding silence between them was looming constantly, a threat of something terrible hanging in the air in the small amount of space now separating them from each other. Each had so much to say and the tension was amounting to something they didn't want to face.

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"What's going on in here?" Lacey teased, slender arms folded across her chest and a smirk playing at her lips as she leaned against the door-frame of Olive's room. It had been weeks since their mother's burial and Grant had pleaded with Olive several more times - and quite heatedly - that he believed their relationship was more than step-siblings and that it had quite the room for growing potential.

Olive bolted to an upright position quickly, standing and smoothing her jeans. "Honestly, we're done talking," she said, suggesting that Grant leave through the spaces in her phrasing. Grant sighed and nodded, getting up from the bed and departing.

Lacey watched him leave, her eyes noting that he seemed a bit tired. "And his problem would be...?"

"C'mere," Olive muttered, grabbing her sister by the elbow and pulling her into the room so that she could shut the door. "Promise me you won't say anything to Dad."

"I wouldn't do that, Ollie."

Olive took a deep breath before she spoke. She proceeded to explain every last detail to her observant sister, everything that had happened, every conversation and argument that had taken place and Lacey draped over every word.

"Oh, my God," she said once her older sister had finished speaking. "What're you two gonna do?"

Olive shrugged helplessly. "I've told him time and time again that we aren't like that. I don't love 'im like that."

Lacey shook her head, raking her fingers through her long, auburn locks. "Damn. You holdin' up alright?"

Olive's eyes drifted downwards, her gaze becoming distant and darkly thoughtful. "I dunno anymore. I don't know how many times I can tell him that it just ain't gonna happen."

Lacey took Olive's hand into her own. "Lately, it seems to be one awful thing after another. Maybe you two shouldn't talk for awhile, you know? It'd give him time to simmer down and think things through."

"But we've dealt with other fights with silence before and it didn't work, Lace. Why would it work now?"

"Because there's still love there - family or whatever. Love is love, no matter what kind, and when you really, truly care about someone, you'll do whatever it takes to get them back...even if that means a bit of distance."

"I don't like that. I need to be able to communicate."

"And you will. Sometimes, silence speaks louder than anything you could've argued about."

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It made perfect sense in Olive's head that her baby sister's words were ringing in her ears at the moment, given that this situation was similar to the difficulties she'd experienced with her step-brother. This one, however, hurt her much deeper than she could've imagined.

Nearing a clearing, Olive spotted a set of railroad tracks just up ahead. The cicadas sounded in the blazing Georgia swelter and Olive wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The faint sounds of crunching reached the pair and she signalled to Daryl that there were likely a few Walkers just outside the woods.

They reached the treeline and crouched a bit, peering over a small log towards the sound. Two Walkers, indeed, were knees-in-the-dirt, the crunching an indication that they were finishing off what was left of a hunt they'd been successful in.

Olive made brief eye contact with Daryl before he took aim with his crossbow, firing a bolt directly between the eyes of one of the Walkers. Standing from her crouched position, Olive rushed at the other Walker as his sights became set on her movement and the sounds of hungry snarls rose in volume just before the spokes of her pitchfork penetrated through the much-softened skull of the undead person. Kicking the body from her weapon, she flicked the blood away before catching her breath. It was then that her eyes scanned the pile of what was left of the body in front of them.

It was a small shoe.

The bright sun forced her to squint as she knelt briefly to pick up the shoe and examine it. The more she looked at it, the more she realized that the shoe seemed really familiar.

"Oh, God," she breathed, her entire body heaving a sigh as she realized that this shoe belonged to one of the children from Woodbury that had been staying in the prison. The blood splatter on the ground indicated that the body had been small and that the shoe belonged to the body.

She blinked rapidly a few times and dropped the shoe, shoulders folding down towards her chest as she buried her face in her hands and openly wept for the first time since the apocalypse had begun.

Every last bit of sadness, every mistake, every terrible circumstance, every heartbreak - all of the bullshit she had put up with since the beginning of the end was now culminating into this one moment of hopeless loss in a woman who had seen too much death, who had dealt with too many assholes and had killed with a vengeance she should've never had.

Beside her was Daryl, the single best thing that had ever - or would ever - happen to her and in the moment she covered her face, he slung his crossbow over his shoulder and approached her, feeling so sorry that they hadn't spoken in a few days, and suddenly he was feeling rather guilty that he should've been there for her.

Regardless of the silence, Daryl stepped as close to her as possible, his own eyes watering as he removed her hands from her face, cradling her beautiful, broken features in his calloused hands. His thumbs wiped away some of the falling tear-streams from where they were tracing streaks against the patches of dirt on her cheeks. He pulled her close to him by her face, pressing his forehead to hers for a moment as she cried and then wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her within his grasp as a few tears escaped his own eyes.

He felt helpless in her sorrow, but supported her nonetheless. Her body seemed more frail than he recalled with her crumpled, sobbing body limply hanging onto his body for support. Daryl rocked her softly, feeling her fingers clutch at his vest in fists. He turned his eyes towards the heavens, quietly praying that they'd get through this.

They had to.