Author's Note: Big thanks to everyone who has been following this story. Your response has been overwhelming and I hope that you've enjoyed it so far. Sorry that it took a while to finish this chapter. It's a bit intense and it's kind of hard for me to find the time to really get into the right frame of mind to write scenes like this, short of pounding a red bull and staying up until 3am to write while my kid is asleep. But I finally did it and truly hope that it meets your approval. Read on.
Her words repeated over and over in his head. It didn't matter what he said to her, it was clear that she had given up. For nearly an hour, he begged her to speak, pleaded with her to move, but she said no more, just laid there in silence. He could feel himself getting more and more desperate. He finally decided that since his current efforts to snap her out of this weren't working, it was time for something more drastic. He bent down and scooped her up from the bed, meeting no resistance as her limp body settled into his arms. When he pushed through the curtain on her door, he paid no mind to the concerned faces of the group, he simply told them not to follow him as he stalked down the corridor. They didn't, they knew that if anyone could help Carol, it would be him and they trusted that whatever he was doing right now was in her best interest.
He carried her further into the prison until he came to the door of the office where she had brought him only two days before. The room where they had made love for the first time and had fallen asleep in each other's arms. It was more comfortable than her cell and was far enough away from the cell block that no one else would be able to hear what was about to happen. He kicked the door open and placed her softly down in the middle of the bed. He sat her up and propped the pillows behind her. She didn't move from the position she had been placed in. She was still, frozen, her eyes empty. He knew what he had to do. It was the only thing he could think of to snap her back into reality. He paced back and forth across the room, as his mind was consumed by the two possible outcomes. She could come to, snap out of the darkness she had fallen into and realize how wrong this was. Realize that he loved her and he was sorry. Realize that even if she only lived one more day, she couldn't live it like this, cold and empty and alone. The second possible outcome was something he didn't even want to think about. But he knew that it was his only chance of bringing her back and he was willing to take the risk. He stopped his pacing and came to stand before her, bending down and loudly calling her name one last time. As expected, she didn't even flinch. He took a few steps back from her, making sure that she would be able to fully see what he was about to do. He took a deep breath and pulled her gun from the back of his jeans. He hesitated for a spilt second, before throwing it onto the bed in front of her and speaking.
"You wanna just give up and die, that's fine. There you go. Pick it up and end this."
He watched her for any sign of response. She didn't say a word, but she slowly lowered her eyes down to the gun. Her hand was in her lap and he watched as her fingers began to twitch. She slowly began to inch her hand towards the gun, and he reached out and snatched it up before she could even get close. He placed the barrel against his temple and spoke as her eyes slowly rose to meet his.
"You want this gun, you're gonna have to use it after me. Because if you're leaving the world this way, then so am I. I'll be damned if I'm gonna stick around to see you put a bullet in your brain because of something I did. You were fine, you had accepted your fate and you were determined to make your last days count. You made me feel like I would be able to handle losing you, so long as I knew you left this world knowing that I loved you. But I fucked up, I walked away from you when you needed me the most, because I couldn't bear to think that I had hurt you. I can't even find the words to tell you how sorry I am for that. I will feel that guilt for the rest of my life. But it's up to you just how long that's gonna be. Tell me you still want to die, and I'll end this right now. Just say the words."
Her gaze was fixed on him, and he watched as her eyes began to widen and a look of fear washed over her face. It was working. She was coming around. He just had to push her a little more. He pulled the gun from his head just long enough to click the safety off and return the cold steel to his temple.
That was all it took. She opened her mouth and cried out, terror flooding her features. "Daryl, no!" Tears began streaming down her cheeks as he lowered the weapon, her body shaking from the force of her sobs as she broke down, the wall she had built around herself crumbling. He tucked the gun back into his jeans and rushed to her, pulling her into his arms as she wailed, all of the emotions she was feeling bubbling to the surface. He held her against his chest, speaking softly as he tried to comfort her.
"Carol please, it's okay now. I put the gun away. I'm so sorry I had to do that, but I didn't know what else to do. You weren't here. Your eyes were so empty. It was like you were already gone. You can't do that again. Please don't shut down on me. I need you, I can't lose you. Not yet. Not like this. I love you so much it hurts. I'm not ready to let you go yet. Please baby, just breathe. Just come back to me. I need you." he said, his words becoming more desperate with each breath. She felt so fragile in his arms, so small. She cried for what felt like an eternity, deep sobs that shook her small frame and left her gasping for air. As her crying began to fade away, she began to speak, her words escaping between sobs.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so scared. I can't do this anymore. I can't just wait around to die. I feel like I'm losing my mind. I can't spend my days being in love with you and my nights terrified of what is going to happen to you when I'm gone. I saw it myself, I saw what I'm doing to you. The way you looked at me when you thought you hurt me. I can't do that to you. Please Daryl, just let me go. I'm not worth all this. Just let me go. " she choked out.
He only held her tighter, he had no intention of ever letting her go again. "I'm not going anywhere. Do you understand? Just one smile from you, one kiss is worth more to me than anything else in this world. All I want is to make you happy, to spend our last days together the way we always should have. You didn't do anything to me Carol. You've given me more happy memories in the past three days than I've made in the last forty years. Memories that will carry me through the rest of my life, until I'm with you again. I'm the one that fucked that up. Me, my stupid issues. You ain't blaming yourself for any of this, do you hear me?"
She pulled back from his arms, looking at him and seeing that they were mirror images of each other. Red, swollen, tear filled eyes. Full of fear, and regret, and more than anything, love. "Daryl, I love you so much. I just don't know how to do this. I don't know how I'm supposed to be with you knowing that I'm going to have to leave you."
"I don't know either. But I'd rather die a thousand deaths than let you go to yours alone. I'm not leaving. Never again. We'll lock ourselves in this room if it's what you want, but I'm not letting you go yet."
He leaned forward and kissed her with a passion that he had never known before. She wrapped her arms around him, clinging to him desperately. Neither one could fight it. They were destroying each other, but neither one had the strength to leave. They only broke apart when the sound of a loud banging startled them back to reality.
Rick was at the door to the room, knocking frantically and yelling. "Daryl! Carol! Open the door now!"
Carol looked at him with shame in her eyes. "Daryl, I can't see them right now. I'm so ashamed of myself. I must have scared them to death. They know, don't they?"
He nodded. "I had to tell them. Rick wouldn't let me see you until I told him what was going on. But you ain't got any reason to be ashamed of yourself. They'll understand. They were just worried about you." He could see the tears welling up behind her eyes again, threatening to break free. "Hey, don't do that. Don't you start cryin' again. I'll tell him that you're fine now. If you ain't ready to see anyone, then you don't have to. I'll take care of this, just please do something for me. Lay here and wait for me. I'll be right back and we're going to finish this. We're going to figure this out together."
The banging on the door grew louder as he guided her back onto the pillows and pulled the blanket up over her painfully thin frame. She looked so weak, so tired. He leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead. "Sleep if you need to, but I'm gonna be right here when you open your eyes. I love you."
Her eyes were already starting to close and she whispered as he reluctantly left her side. "I love you too."
Daryl opened the door to reveal Rick, and to his surprise, Eric. He quickly stepped out and pulled the door shut quietly behind him. He could see that Rick was about to say something, but he spoke first. "She's back, for now. But she's terrified. She doesn't want to see anyone. I need more time with her."
Rick could see that Daryl was an emotional wreck, it was obvious that he had been crying and he was struggling to even look at him, his hand still on the knob of the door, ready to get back to her. But Rick couldn't let him leave yet. Not without hearing what he had to say. "Daryl, you need to let go of the door. I have to tell you something and I need you to pay attention. It's about Carol."
Daryl looked at Rick and saw the concern in his eyes. He slipped his hand off of the knob, folding his arms across his chest as he slumped against the door frame and waited to hear what Rick had to say.
"Daryl, I told Eric everything you told me about what's been happening with Carol. I'm sorry, I know I should have asked you first since he's pretty much a stranger to you, but I couldn't just wait back there and do nothing. I thought maybe there was something he could do to help her. He told me something. I don't know what's been happening with her, but I can tell you now that it's not cancer. It's not possible. But you need to let Eric see her. She needs to be checked out, because something is wrong with her, it's just not what she thinks."
Daryl was completely alert now, looking back and forth between the two men, not really knowing what to make of Rick's statement. "What do you mean she doesn't have cancer? How the hell can you say that? You haven't seen her Rick. I have. All you've seen is the bruises. She has headaches so intense that it took me almost an hour to get her to even open her eyes because the pain was so bad. And that was after I gave her a strong ass painkiller. She was burning up and told me that every time she gets a headache, she gets a fever too. She's weak and she's so thin that she's feels like she could snap in half. She knows the symptoms Rick, I told you that. She went through this all before. So you need to tell me right now what the fuck makes you so sure that she's wrong." he said, trying with all his might to keep the volume of his voice low so he wouldn't wake her up.
Rick looked at Eric and spoke. "I think you need to tell him what you told me." He looked back at Daryl who was clenching his fists at his sides, unable to channel his emotions any other way. "Daryl, please listen to him. He knows what he's talking about."
Eric stepped forward and took a deep breath as he began to explain. "Rick mentioned to you all that I was an emergency room doctor. But my wife, Carrie, she was an oncologist at the same hospital where I worked. We didn't talk much about work, we were usually both so tired by the time we came home that we were lucky if we even had time to eat supper together before we had to go to sleep or go back in for another shift. But one day, about a week before the outbreak started, she came home and told me something that she couldn't even seem to believe. Her patients were getting better. All of them, their symptoms were vanishing. It was like some kind of mass miracle. She didn't know what to make of it. She had run new scans on all of her patients and tumors were shrinking, cell counts were evening out. She thought she was going crazy. She spoke with the other doctors in her department and sure enough, they all had the same story. They called the CDC and it was the same thing, it was all over the country, all over the world. Something was happening and even the CDC couldn't explain it. The doctors and the patients were all told to keep quiet, the CDC didn't want to start some kind of mass hysteria. They needed more time to figure out what was going on. Five days later the dead started to rise, and it became clear to us that the two things had to be connected. They just had to be. But there was no time to find proof. Our town was overrun in a matter of hours and we had no choice but to abandon her research and run. We've been running ever since. I told you that I lost her, she would be able to tell you more than I can. But she told me enough. I don't know how, but whatever it is that has done this to us, whatever virus, or bacteria, or parasite has infected us has done something that science has been trying to do for years. It's cured cancer."
Daryl's back slid down the door, landing on his ass as his legs gave out under the weight of this revelation. He had no reason to trust this man, he didn't know him. But he trusted Rick, and if he believed him then Daryl knew that it was the truth. She didn't have cancer. There was no chance that it would ever come back. Relief flooded his body as the thought repeated over and over again in his brain. But his relief was short lived. Her leukemia may not have returned, but it didn't change the facts. Something was very wrong with her, something that had caused her enough pain for her to assume the worst. He pulled himself from the torment in his mind and looked up at the two men standing before him, waiting for him to say something.
"If she doesn't have cancer, then what's wrong with her? She's so sick. We have to help her. I'm not losing her."
Whew! There it is folks. My big twist. I don't know if anyone saw that coming, but it just kind of came to me and diverted me away from the path I was originally on. Please review and let me know what you think. I need the input. Updates soon. Thanks for reading. xoxoxo Bekah xoxoxo