Summary: "Sometimes I wish he was alive. I wish he was alive and I knew how to use this…" her eyes fixed on the knife. After practicing, Carol and Daryl spend some time talking about Ed.

Hey, everyone!

Thank you for all the nice words!

It was a huge relief that you liked them getting married :)

I hope you like this story too :)

The Walking Dead belong to Robert Kirkman and AMC. No copyright infringement intended.

Enjoy!

They had just finished practicing. She was getting better. No, she was actually good. Soon he wouldn't have anything new to teach her about guns and knives. Maybe he should start showing her how to use a crossbow. If she wanted, of course. He wouldn't mind. He enjoyed the time they spent together. Months of denying that had led him nowhere; he had finally come to terms with the fact that Carol was the person closest to him. He cared. A lot. Nothing had happened between them, but lately his stomach twisted in a knot every time she smiled to him.

He had never looked at her as something more than a friend before. He didn't allow himself to. There is no room for that shit when you want to survive. It was after the Governor had left them alone and their lives resumed a more normal pace that he found himself longing for her company more and more. Glenn kept teasing him that they were married and he kept threatening that he'd kick his ass, but in the end of the day, he couldn't deny that something was brewing between then. And it was quite unfortunate his timing. His seemed to catch up precisely the moment Carol had accepted they were just friends. But he didn't care; it was Glenn's fault he had started doubting their sibling relationship in the first place. They were friends, period.

Disentangling the knife she had pinned on the trunk of the tree, he turned to find her staring at her lap, a grim expression spread in her face. She was holding her other knife and her gun, studying them as if she had never seen them before.

"What's wrong?" he asked abruptly.

She flinched and tried to laugh it off. "Uh… Nothing," she smiled shyly.

He raised a brow and leaned against the trunk, folding his arm in his chest, waiting. Carol was sitting on a big rock, right next to the creek that streamed through the forest.

She confined under his burning look, exhaling deeply.

"Sometimes I wish he was alive. I wish he was alive and I knew how to use this…" her eyes fixed on the knife. "Or that…" she pondered, drifting her gaze on the gun, before changing her mind and returning back to the knife. "No, I'd go with this one. Way more painful."

He had always wanted to know. Sure he knew Ed was an abusive son of a bitch, but he always wanted to know more. He had so many questions…

"Why did you stay with him?" he heard his voice asking faintly before he could control himself.

"After a while you feel that you deserve the abuse, that it's your fault," she wavered and then turned to face him, her eyes stabbing daggers in his. "But you know that, don't you?"

He nodded. Daryl didn't need explanations; he could understand almost everything. He just wanted to know, or just hear the things he already knew from the scars in her body and the sorrowful shadow in her blue gaze every time her mind traveled back to these times. It seemed like an eternity was standing between them and their past lives, but it was less than a year and a half ago. They had come so long, she and he. It was so obvious even Daryl could admit it to himself. He wanted more, he wanted details.

"Did you ever try to… uh.." he searched for the right words.

"To leave him?" she asked sadly. "Oh, I did… twice," her eyes darting on her lap again. It was the first time he had asked, she didn't know how much she could or should or wanted to say.

"Tell me," his voice was faint but firm.

"Are you sure you want to know?"

He nodded again.

"Promise not to lose your temper?" she asked seeing the tension radiating off his figure.

Shit, he was getting angry already. "I'll do my best."

She sighed, that was rarely enough. He stared at her intensely, silently encouraging her to tell him the whole story. Carol knew that he waited.

"The first time, Sophia was two," she started, the corner of her lips twitching in a smile at the memory of Sophia's chubby cheeks when she was a toddler. "One night he came back home drunk and said that dinner sucked. He shoved me down the stairs. I spent three days in the hospital with broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. When I got discharged I took Sophia and fled to my folks, begged them to let me stay there till I could find a job," she paused for just a moment. "Ed was banging the door like a bull by the next morning and my father said that a woman's place is in her husband's side. I never talked to them again. I was their child, how could they just hand me and their grand-daughter to my torturer without even a blink?" she was still wondering; all these years had passed and she had never forgiven them, never managed to find them an excuse for abandoning her like that.

Daryl felt rage boiling in his veins; he had to grit his teeth loudly to keep himself silent. He wanted to yell and cuss them. He wanted to scream that he hoped her folks were wandering aimlessly on this damned world as walkers, drooling saliva, chewing their own flesh, never cross roads with someone who would simply smash their heads, condemned forever in this torture for what they had done to her. But he remained silent, his jaw aching from the effort.

She steadied her breath trying to calm herself before continuing. "So, I realized that if I was to leave him, I would be alone in that. I started doing my best to save some money; it wasn't much, but all I needed was a head start, you know? Until I could stand on my feet… In the meanwhile, Megan moved to the neighborhood. Megan and her husband had two kids, we became friends immediately. Surprisingly enough Ed didn't mind this time. I was never allowed to have friends before, but he let me and Sophia spent time with Megan. I guess he was sick of me already and wanted me out of the house as long as he had me leashed. And Megan lived just across the street, so… I lost her somewhere in the havoc of running away during the breakthrough…" her voices drifted as the door of her past swung open and old memories flooded her.

"Anyway, after two years, I finally had enough money to go away again; Megan had given me most of it behind her husband's back. One morning, as soon as Ed left for work, I packed the car, grabbed Sophia and drove away. We moved at the other side of the country, nobody knew our exact location. Megan and her husband tried to mislead him, but it didn't work… Twenty three days later, Sophia disappeared one morning. I almost lost my mind. That same night, Ed called and told me I had one last chance to go back and be with my daughter. I never learned how the hell he found me. I succumbed to his blackmail, of course. When I showed up in his place, he had been waiting. That time I spent a month in the hospital," she was twisting her fingers nervously now, tears welling up in her eyes. "First week in the ICU doctors didn't know if I'd make it. He had started punching and kicking me until I was on the floor. In the end he grabbed me from the hair, I used to have long hair back then, and whacked my head against the counter again and again, until…" she kept her eyes downcast, staring blankly at her hands, tears rolling freely down her face, voice nothing more than a whisper.

Daryl was infuriated. He wanted Ed alive in front of him so that he could give him a taste from his own medicine and see how much of a man his was against him and not against a woman half his size. Oh, no, he wouldn't kill the bastard… Not before making him spit out all his teeth one by one, count every single bone of his body crack and cough blood. His breaths came out ragged and he felt nauseated. He wanted to hug her, but he didn't know how; he wanted to tell that he hated himself every single day for not helping her back in the quarry, but he didn't know how to do that either. He wanted to slam his fist against the tree trunk and hear his knuckles shuttering, but he didn't want to scare her.

So he did something he rarely did and he did it for her. He swallowed his rage painfully, pressed his lips in a firm line and walked closer to her, his boots stopping mere inches from her own, but she didn't find the courage to face him, lost in her own painful memories and ashamed of herself. He sat on the ground, next to her feet, bowing his head lightly to meet her gaze. When her eyes finally drifted on him, trying to force a sad smirk and miserably failing, he could see how devastated she was.

"I put my child through hell," her chin trembled, soft whimpers escaping her chest, but he didn't mind. It was the first time he didn't feel like turning his back and bolt at the sight of her tears. "I was too weak to protect her… She watched her momma get beaten up all her life," she choked, but swallowed the lump.

He put his hand on her knee, squeezing it awkwardly. "You were alone," Daryl murmured, his voice huskier that he meant it to be. "Nobody cared. All you needed was a chance… But nobody cared."

"Megan did," she whispered.

"It didn't matter," he shook his head. "She couldn't do anything. People who could, didn't care."

They remained silent for a while.

"I never tried anything again after that," she shrugged when she was composed enough to speak again. "I just cut my hair so he couldn't grab me."

She covered the callous hand on her knee with her own, afraid that he'd jerk away. When he didn't, she stroked tenderly his rough skin.

"I hated him. God, you have no idea how much I hated him. Not just because I was nothing more than a punch bag to him for the greatest part of our marriage. But because he killed the man I had fallen in love with," she confessed. "The Ed you met had nothing in common with the Ed I had met. I never stopped searching his eyes to find the man that used to say he loved me. I never forgave him for killing that Ed, for not giving us a chance to happiness. Sophia deserved that. And now I know I did too."

He snorted his disapproval, a twist of jealousy clenching his chest. "The Ed you were looking for never existed. It was that asshole all the way."

"Maybe," she admitted. "That doesn't mean my love for him was any less real."

He knew he was a fool, he couldn't be jealous of her dead husband, he didn't even have the right to; but he couldn't help it. Carol's love shouldn't be wasted to that asshole; she should have never opened her heart to him. There were other men for her, men like… He squeezed her knee again, not trusting his voice to say anything, his brow furrowed in grave concern. Her expression suddenly changed, panic crept in distorting her features.

"He never laid a hand on her, not even a spank, I swear!" she exclaimed out of nowhere, as if to justify herself, eyeing Daryl like was a judge. "He always had me blocking his way and it drove him crazy. Every time I ended up in the hospital, Megan would take Sophia in her place. Ed didn't want her in his way and he couldn't care less where she was as long as she didn't bother him. He never laid his hand on Sophia. Never," she reiterated sternly. "I made sure of that."

"I know," he replied reassuringly. "I remember you in Atlanta; you always kept her away from him. And you ended up with new bruises later."

"It's… It's not just that…" her hands started shaking. "Had you noticed? How…"

He nodded, instantly aware of what she was talking about.

"It had only started in the quarry, never before. The way he was looking at her… His own daughter! God!" she wept, burying her face in her free hand.

"Did he…"

Her head snapped. "No! Never!"

"Okay…"

"You don't believe me?" she asked wild-eyed.

He twisted his hand under hers and grabbed her fingers. "Of course I do."

A shaky sigh of relief escaped her lips. "But I knew I couldn't stop him for much longer. Stop him from beating her was one thing, but…" her face became expressionless, her voice flat. "I would have killed him; I knew what I had to do. Before he even had the chance to touch her. In his sleep. Walkers got him first."

Daryl was shocked. "God, Carol…" his heart was racing.

"Not that in the end any of that mattered to my little girl," she breathed.

They stayed there, holding hands, unspoken messages conveying between each other.

"I wish I had done something for you," he confessed, his fingers still holding hers.

She smiled. "You have no idea how much you've done for me…"

"No. No… I should have stopped him," he continued kicking himself.

"Stop it, Daryl. Just stop it, please," she scolded him. "We've been through all that with Sophia. Not everything that happens to me is your fault."

She tilted his chin to force him to meet her eyes. "You have saved me in every possible way. Better start believing it yourself, because I have no doubt about it," she told him softly and watched him blush.

"I've thrown every kind of shit to you. And not just once." This was his way to apologize for every hurtful thing he had ever spat on her face and bitterly regretted later.

She knew, of course. "Well, that's what friends are for," she smiled broadly.

The moment she called him "friend", it felt like she had slapped him in the face.

I really hope you liked this one :)

I always felt that the show never gave Carol enough screen time to tell us her story and they really should! So I tried to do justice to her, shedding some light to these blind spots. Her plan to murder Ed was based on what she told Andrea to do with the Governor.

It felt great writing this story. There is no action or Caryl fluff, but I wanted to give them a bonding moment. :)

Thank you for reading! Your reviews would be extremely appreciated!

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