Thanks for your patience in waiting for me to update this one. I appreciate all the kind words from reviewers who have discovered it and sent encouragement. Longer AN (rant warning) at the end for you. Thanks to followers & favorites!

Disclaimer: No infringement intended. I own nothing from TWD; I only borrow their characters and settings so I can help them make some sort of sense in at least one alternate reality. (They sure don't in the one I've watched on AMC).

The Perfect Sky

"I thought I saw a man brought to life
He was warm, he came around and he was dignified
He showed me what it was to cry

Well, you couldn't be that man I adored
You don't seem to know
Seem to care what your heart is for
But I don't know him anymore

Illusion never changed
into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see
The perfect sky is torn
You're a little late, I'm already torn, torn..."

Natalie Imbruglia, Torn

One of the biggest ironies was that it had been a beautiful day. Horrible things weren't supposed to happen under such a perfect sky. The sun had burned off the early morning mist and after last night's thwarted invasion there was no new build up of walkers along the fences yet. Rick and Carl had taken a walk down to the garden to check what damage may have been done to the crops and Michonne and Hershel had headed out to burn the bodies of the walkers that the father and son team had taken out last night defending the prison. Bob was administering the meds they'd brought back from the vet school. Maggie was with Glenn, Tyreese with Sasha, and Beth with Judith. With the exception of Daryl, everyone was with someone they cared for.

Rick had taken Carol out and left her the day before. As he tried to explain that choice to Daryl and then to Tyreese, the prison had been attacked, destroying any hope of remaining there. They were scattered, on the run, torn from their home.

"Carl! Slow down!" Rick Grimes called in a rough whisper to his son who stalked ahead of him, the stiff set of his back giving evidence of his anger.

In his battle with Phillip Blake Rick had been shot in the thigh, almost choked to death and brutally beaten, probably with broken ribs and bruising to his kidneys. He limped slowly, painfully putting one foot in front of the other as if he was walking a tightrope without a net.

Carl didn't care. If his dad couldn't keep up he would be left behind. Carl had more important things to worry about.

"Carl!" Rick yelled, and that forced the boy to stop and turn around to glare at his father because it woke up the little curly-haired boy on his back. Carl had used his coat to fashion a sling of sorts so he could carry Luke while he slept. Out in the open, walking down the deserted road away from the prison they were extremely vulnerable to walkers and anyone else who might be nearby. The chance that it would be someone from their group didn't outweigh the reality that it was more likely to be someone they didn't want to run into. Carl needed his hands free to hold his gun and knife.

"Carl? What's wrong? Is it walkers?" Luke asked fearfully. He'd watched his own father die and turn only the night before and had barely escaped the interior of the prison, falling down the stairs of the isolation ward in A block, surviving only because he'd run into Carl. He'd twisted his knee and could barely walk, so Carl had carried him since the prison.

"Shhh—it's ok Luke—you have to be quiet, ok?" Carl soothed the little kid who was screwing up his face in preparation for a crying jag none of them could afford. What was that old song Beth and Carol always sang to the kids at night? Unwanted tears sprang to his eyes as he thought of his friends, lost now; one to the governor's attack and the other to his own arrogant belief that he could save them all.

Why had Carol done it? Lied for him? When she'd found him burning the bodies she hadn't even asked him why, she'd just taken the water she'd brought for Karen and David to drink and used it to wash the blood from his hands and face. Then she'd quietly told him to go change his clothes and burn the ones he'd been wearing.

Rick came up next to Carl and looked down at his son, still finding it hard to believe the miracle that he'd found him in the ruins of their life at the prison. When he'd come upon Judith's bloodied car seat he'd fallen to his knees, weeping uncontrollably, ready to let the walkers finish him. The shock of seeing Hershel, the man who'd been like a father to him cut down so brutally, of seeing the fences fall and the walls of what had been their home, their hope for the future, blasted through by cannon fire had almost broken him, but seeing that bloody seat had destroyed him.

He should've know that Carl would find and save his father from the walker who'd had him in its grasp as Rick curled over the car seat, lost in grief. The weight of the walker had fallen on him and Rick braced himself for the bite ripping at his flesh, but it was literally dead weight. With Luke clinging to his back, Carl had raised his 22 and taken out the ghoulish female walker with the long black hair and strange combination of men's and women's clothing.

They'd run then, looking for a vehicle, but found all of them shot up, damaged with either flat tires or punctured gas tanks. They were on foot and moving much too slowly because of Rick's injuries. Carl was young and healthy, but carrying Luke's weight wore him down. He was exhausted; only his anger and fear kept him moving.

"I'm hungry." Luke whimpered and gripped at Carl's shirt. "But Miss Carol says you're good at finding things, so we'll be ok." he added with more confidence.

"That's right, Luke," Rick croaked, his voice hoarse from the damage to his throat. "Carl's good at just about everything he does." Carl scowled at the compliment and looked away. Luke looked back and forth between them and frowned.

"There are some houses up ahead—need to get inside—find some more food…supplies." Carl said, nodding to their right. He and his father could go without food for a couple of days, but Luke wouldn't survive long without nourishment. He owed it to Carol, to all the people who had sacrificed so much to protect all the children, to keep him alive.

Rick nodded, agreeing with his son, wondering if any of the others had made it out. He had lost track of Michonne after she'd saved him, his mind fixated on finding his kids, but if anyone could get out of there it would have been her…and Daryl. The two of them were warriors, survivors.

He'd put off telling Daryl about what he'd been forced to do in leaving Carol behind. Rick knew the decision wouldn't set well with the bowman. For some reason Daryl had become attached to the small grey haired widow, relied on her ability to read social situations in a way that was still hard for the loner who felt more comfortable by himself in the woods stalking game. Everyone knew that when Daryl wasn't out on a run or hunting if you wanted to find him, just look for Carol. If he wasn't with her, she'd know where he was. She cared about Daryl. Rick had seen it most openly in her reaction to his failure to return from Woodbury last fall. Carol had been devastated. But when he'd exiled her? Forced her away from Daryl two days ago? She hadn't even spoken his name.

And Daryl's reaction to Rick's news? "That's her, but that ain't her..." had been ambiguous at best. Daryl kept his cards close to his winged vest. Rick had no idea how deep his feelings for Carol ran. Was she just a fellow survivor, a part of their makeshift family, or was she something more to the tracker?

The Governor's arrival had cut short their attempt to gauge Tyreese's response to the news of Carol's confession. Part of Rick wondered if they had told him if he would've gone off on them the same way he had when they had discovered the burned and blackened bodies outside of Solitary. Both Carol and Daryl had been so confident they could handle the big man...

Rick flexed his bandaged hand, still swollen from using it to beat down Tyreese even before his near death experience battling Blake. In the last 48 hours he'd abandoned one of his best friends, seen half their group die from a super flu or from being bitten by those like Patrick who'd died and turned, fought off the horde of walkers that broke down the fences with Carl by his side, watched a man he loved like a father be brutally slain in front of his eyes, been shot and strangled and then saw the walls and fences come down around them as the prison fell.

They'd had an evacuation plan, they had...but with so many dead, without Hershel and Carol to get everyone organized, well, it had all fallen apart. Instead of getting all the children safely on the bus, it had been shot up and left, careening down the road half full. Rick had no idea who'd been on it or who else had made it to safety. He had his son and he couldn't stick around to look for anyone else. Without a vehicle and with his injuries they'd never make it to the rendezvous point to meet up with any other survivors. Maybe Daryl's tracking skills would allow him to find them, maybe not. Maybe he'd use those skills to look for someone else...a small silver-haired woman from whom he could never seem to stray too far.

Rick looked ahead of him to see his son had once more resumed his steady pace away from him, towards the houses ahead in the distance. He knew that Carl would do whatever it took to save Luke, even if it meant leaving his father behind. The broken man quickened his pace.

The bullets that raked the bus as it waited in the prison yard for Beth and Maggie to return not only punctured the fuel tank, they hit three of the former Woodbury residents who had cowered in the back. One was hit in the head, dying instantly, prevented from turning, but the others were mortally wounded and quickly bled out, from an aorta and a femoral artery. They were among the many that turned almost immediately after death, awaking with a desperate hunger and mindlessly seeking their first new meal. The driver of the bus, Alice, the African-American woman who had argued with Carol over being placed in isolation, didn't see them rise out of their seats and attack those directly in front of them. All she saw was the tank roll over the wire mesh fence, heading towards them.

Glenn had stepped off the bus to look for his wife, but as he turned to re-enter, the doors slammed in his face and he was almost knocked to the ground as Alice put the hulking transport into gear and sped away. In her panic she stepped on the gas pedal, hitting fifty, and the bus whipped down the road and away from the prison. She mistook the screams arising from the back for complaints about her driving skills and swore at the ungrateful passengers she was trying to save. She didn't see the death rising just behind her until it was too late.

No one on the bus survived.

It sat in the middle of the highway diagonally across both lanes, the smell of gasoline heavy in the air around it, when Maggie, Sasha and Bob came across it. They'd fled the prison on foot, stopping once they were clear of the mass of walkers streaming towards the sounds of gunfire and explosions. After patching up Bob's gunshot wound, they circled back to the prison road.

Maggie broke rank and ran, calling Glenn's name, but reeled back when the first walker's arms reached for her through the broken window. Sasha and Bob exchanged a worried look, knowing their friend was barely holding it together after losing track of both Beth and Glenn so soon after her father's brutal murder. It was only her fierce determination to find them that overruled the more prudent course of action, championed by Sasha, to gather supplies and then move out as quickly as possible to the rendezvous spot.

When they found the bus they had all been afraid they would find Glenn among the trapped walkers. Maggie had looked every one of them in the face as she took them out. She knew them all, regretted their loss, and then felt guilt at her overwhelming sense of relief that Glenn was not among them.

"We need to go, Maggie." Sasha said quietly, coming to the open door of the bus where Maggie sat slumped in the second seat back. "If he made it out, that's where he'll be—it's where they'll all be. Tyreese and Beth too."

"And Daryl." Bob added, joining them, still feeling gratitude to the man who had found him and brought him into the fold, the one he'd let down so badly at the vet college. He had a lot of making up to do to the hard as nails redneck who'd given him another chance during the attack on the prison.

"There's a chance for anyone who wasn't on this bus—Rick, Carl, Judith, Michonne, Carol and the kids—we need to get there as quickly as we can." Sasha agreed. Maggie sighed. Obviously Rick hadn't gotten around to telling Sasha about what he'd done—exiling Carol—she didn't know who all had been told or not, so she decided to stay quiet. The odds of Carol meeting up with anyone else were fairly slim. She would've been hours away from the prison by now...unless she had come back, defied Rick's edict...would she leave Lizzie and Mika? Would she leave Daryl?

"Can't take this thing—gas tanks shot to hell." Bob grimaced at the bus, breaking into Maggie's thoughts. "Looks like we're on foot until we can find something better."

Maggie looked back over the dead, realizing that there were supplies stored in the back of the bus that they'd need if they were going to make it to the meeting point.

"Let's salvage what we can carry and head out then." Maggie said, pushing her hair back off of her face and standing. Both Sasha and Bob nodded. Maggie stopped and looked down at the other two survivors. "I'm glad you're here." she said gratefully.

"We'll find them, Maggie." Bob said reassuringly.

"We stick together, right?" Sasha said, wanting the other woman's assurance she wouldn't go off on her own looking for Glenn and Beth. "Safety in numbers."

Both Maggie and Bob nodded.

"I wouldn't have made it out of there without you two," Bob reminded them and then grinned broadly, "You're my guardian angels. Not lettin' you outa my sight!"

"We can't." Carol said, lying on her side in the big comfortable bed in their odd place of safety, awakening to the warmth of a big masculine body against her back and the delicious feeling of rough fingers delicately tracing a path up and down her shoulder and arm and then settling over her hip to draw her ass back against him. She sighed as she felt his hardness notch at the junction of her thighs, nudging gently.

After her revelation about Carl, she'd suddenly felt bone weary, all of the traumatic events of the last week hitting her all at once, too tired even to weep. Daryl hadn't asked her anything more, just opened his arms and held her until she'd fallen into a deep sleep, feeling safe for the first time since she'd gotten in the car with Rick to leave the prison.

"Why the hell not?" Daryl growled softly, right at her ear, his voice not quite a whisper but pitched low, for her alone.

"We need to get some more sleep—we have a long drive ahead of us in the morning—and your knee needs to stay raised with that cold pack on it to get some more of the swelling down—" Carol tried being sensible, but his left hand traced random patterns over her ribs and then slid up and under to palm her breast, effectively silencing her except for a quiet moaning sigh.

She wasn't sure she'd ever get used to him touching her so intimately with such seeming ease. After nearly two years of shy glances and flight when things became too emotionally intense she found it a bit ironic that she had Rick's banishment of her to thank for Daryl finally overcoming his self-imposed barriers to intimacy.

"Shhh." Daryl soothed, "Need this...please?" he asked, nuzzling her ear, his chin whiskers scrubbing against her neck making her shiver, "After tonight—if we find everyone—when we find everyone," he quickly amended, "be a long time before it's just us again, alone, together."

"What will happen then, Daryl?" Carol asked, "When we find the others?" she felt him stop his careful caresses and raise his head. She moved so she was on her back and sat up, pulling the sheet up to cover her and then turned to look down at him. He frowned at her, looking like he wished she hadn't drawn away from him, but unsure if he should touch her to pull her closer. Her body language was closed off again, the same way it had been when she'd thought he was with Beth.

"Whatta ya mean?" he asked, sitting up next to her. "We tell 'em the truth. Weren't you, it was Carl." he said evenly, "You were just trying to protect him."

"I can't do that to Carl...to Rick..." Carol said, looking troubled. "I promised Lori I'd watch out for them." she said, looking down at her clenched hands. "Rick has already lost so much—"

"You're not gonna martyr yourself for them." Daryl said stubbornly. "Rick's just gonna have to face facts—Carl thought he was doin' the right thing, but he's still a kid—we all forget that because he's so tough, but he's just a kid." Daryl scowled, "What Rick did to you was heartless n' he knew I'd never've let it happen without a fight, so he didn't wait 'til I got back."

"I thought he was going to kill me." Carol said in a small voice and Daryl saw a tear plop onto her clenched hands before she raised them to wipe at her eyes, sniffing angrily. As she met his questioning gaze, her chin quivered and her throat worked as she waited for his reaction.

"What?" Daryl asked, shocked.

"When we got back to the car with the stuff that we'd found, he had his hand on his gun. I tried to open the car door, but it was locked. He told me I couldn't come back to the prison, that when they found out what I did no one would want me there...no one... he didn't say your name, but I knew he meant you. And I couldn't argue with him, there was no point, he'd made up his mind. You know how he is when he's made up his mind about something. He told me..." she began, but the tears began anew and she choked up, holding her hands over her face.

Daryl couldn't take it—whether or not she wanted him to, he couldn't stand to see her weep and do nothing, so he slid closer and put his hand tentatively on her shoulder.

Carol slowly lowered her hands, intertwined her fingers under her chin as if she was about to pray and then rested her chin on them as she spoke.

"Rick told me that if everyone else died, that even if it was just he and I left, he wouldn't want me there, he couldn't trust me around his children." Carol said, sounding heartbroken, "There's no trust left between us. I don't know who that man is, Daryl—I thought we were family, but he betrayed me."

"I trusted Rick to know what was right, to step up and lead us again." Daryl began carefully.

"So you didn't really buy into the Council?" Carol asked hotly, shrugging his hand off of her shoulder. "You were just biding your time until Rick was ready to give up the old McDonald routine?"

Daryl could see that she was growing more and more upset, which wasn't what he'd intended.

"Let me finish—I ...I could 'a killed Blake—taken him out before he killed Hershel—but Rick was down at the fence negotiating with him for their lives." Daryl told her, knowing it did no good to second guess his decision, but wishing now he'd taken the shot or let Carl do it.

"You can't negotiate with a mad man who's already made up his mind." Carol said flatly, a lesson she had learned all too well in her marriage. Daryl nodded, scrubbing his hands over his face, trying to shake the image of the katana slicing into the old man's neck, of Hershel falling to the side in slow motion as the blood soaked through... he dropped his hands and saw that Carol was staring at him intently. "You can't negotiate with a mad man who's already made up his mind."

"We ain't talkin' about Blake now, are we?" Daryl asked her then in a tight voice.

"Do you know what the definition of insanity is Daryl? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I don't know if I can ever trust my life to Rick Grimes again." Carol said sadly.

"Have to take Beth to the rendezvous." Daryl told her, shaking his head.

"I know. If there's any chance to find Maggie and Glenn, we have to give it to her." Carol agreed.

"Not leavin' you." Daryl said stubbornly, hating the idea that helping Beth could put Carol in danger. He also knew if Rick was there he might be forced to choose between Carol and the man who'd become like another brother to him.

Carol saw the tension in his shoulders, how his jaw clenched stubbornly. She wanted to touch him, to draw him into an embrace, but what she needed to do was to put more distance between them so he would feel better about going. She picked up one of the pillows and hugged it to her chest.

"Daryl, I love Beth, I do—but we both know that she isn't as capable of taking care of herself as I am." Carol told him in as calm a voice as she could muster. "Since the Woodbury group came she never went on runs, she took good care of Judith and helped out in the kitchen and infirmary, but we never asked much else from her. She'll need you with her to get her safely to the meeting place."

"I can't...can't lose you again." Daryl grated out, moving in on her, past her resistant body language, dragging the pillow from her grasp and pushing her back on the bed. Whatever further words of protest she might've tried uttering were lost as his mouth found hers, desperately tender, pleading with her to respond in kind without saying a word. Carol tried to stay still, passively resisting his passion, but when his trembling hands cradled her face she felt tears, his tears, wet on her cheeks. He took a sobbing breath as he licked at her lower lip, his agile tongue soft and hot, and her arms went around his chest to his back, holding him close, opening to his questing kisses.

They both knew that if he left with Beth anything could happen, that whatever promises they made or good intentions they had, the reality was that in this walker infested hell their world had become the only way to have even a slim chance you'd keep your loved ones alive and with you was to never let them out of your sight.

Who knew how many of them were out there, separated from the ones they loved? Hoping, praying that if they could somehow make their way to the rendezvous, they weren't too late to find the others.

The beautiful day had unfolded into the worst they had known in a long time. The perfect sky had gone dark. It was night. Some found shelter, locking themselves up in long dead stranger's homes after first making sure the former owners were no longer in residence. Some sat around small campfires outdoors, taking turns at watch, hoping the low flames and smell of blood from their wounds wouldn't attract walkers. The luckiest had found each other, against all odds, and rested in a place of safety where they could finally be together. There were still hard decisions to come, but for tonight, it was enough.

AN: If you follow my other WIP stories, you will notice that I haven't updated any of them in a while. My feels have been all over the place with this season's episodes. I was hoping to get some inspiration when the second half of the season started up, but have been extremely underwhelmed with everything I've seen so far. It's been the longest since I updated Torn, so I thought I should give it a try first. When I found the Natalie Imbruglia song that starts this chapter I sighed with relief because it seemed to perfectly describe Rick's actions and also how I have been feeling about TWD in general. This stanza fit my mood best:

"There's nothing where he used to lie
My inspiration has run dry
That's what's going on
Nothing's right, I'm torn."

In this chapter I based most of what happens in the Rick/Carl section on the events of their first episode after the prison fell, except I saved Luke, which gives Carl a reason to not be such a little bitch. I'm sorry but I've had it with that kid. The Maggie section is also pretty close to what happened in their episode. Obviously the Caryl section veers wildly away from the storyline we've been subjected to on the show, in which canon now seems to dictate that both Daryl and Carol have forgotten that each other even exists. Ugh. Yes, I cheered when Carol came back and saved Judith from smothery Lizzie, but 5 minutes of Carol in her first appearance since what, Ep. 3?4? Again, ugh. And this week will be all D/B with again, no Carol at all? Seriously writers, WTF?

My versions of them were also smart enough to have agreed upon a meeting place in case the prison was compromised instead of wandering Willy nilly until they found big signs promising "Sanctuary" but might as well have read, "Trap." Glenn seems to be the only one who's got a lick of sense left and even he gets saddled with the new crazy people.

Thanks for reading my rant. One bright spot: Congrats to MMB on her Best Supporting Actress nod for the Sci Fi Awards:)