I've got Chapter 10 for you all today—the exact halfway point on this little adventure. There are some more references to sex in this chapter, but I don't think they are graphic enough to warrant a higher rating. But if you don't want to read anything of that nature, please be aware of it.

I've started a tumblr account, under the name of Praxid. I'd love for you to check it out. And thank you, thank you, thank you for reading!

Good Shepherd:

No matter what happened to him—no matter how far he ran or what he did or how much things changed, Daryl always seemed to end up back at his daddy's house.

He pulled the bike up alongside the front yard. The melting snow soaked the dirt, and the wheels sank in low. His hands clenched tight on the bars.

And he could feel Carol hanging onto his sides, right there behind him. It made him nervous. He'd brought her to the worst place on the face of the planet. Just because Rick told him to. He'd been too wound up—acted on the idea without thinking through what it meant. He'd just wanted to get outside, for fuck's sake—and this is where it took him.

Normally, having her on his bike was good. Just knowing someone was there with him calmed him down. She didn't always ride with him when the group travelled—especially when the weather was bad—but Daryl always found himself hoping she'd decide to come along. He never asked her to do it—the idea of asking never occurred to him. But he liked having her close.

Even so, Carol didn't belong anywhere near this place. He couldn't imagine letting her through the front door.

And the real joke was that this was the first time he'd ever brought a girl home. And he thought of what Merle would have to say about that. Daryl could almost hear his voice, as if he was standing right behind him. Laughing.

Daryl had seen some pretty weird shit in the last year—been through a lot more than he could put into words. The walkers were just the beginning of it, really. But having Carol here at his daddy's house… that was one of the strangest experiences of his entire life.

Daryl was six years old, and he and Merle hadn't seen their daddy for four days.

They had no clue where he'd gotten himself off to. No idea how to find him. So they spent that time holed up in the house—and it was getting tense being stuck in there together all day, every day. And Daryl was just a little kid, but he was fully aware of that tension.

Merle didn't go to school that week—just stayed with Daryl at home. And he'd been feeding Daryl as best he could, because no one else was around to do it. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he could at least make some approximation of a sandwich. So that's what they'd been eating.

And Merle dropped a plate of something on the coffee table in front of his brother. Yet another sandwich.

Daryl was curled up against the arm of the sofa. Looked up at Merle, standing there in front of him.

"He'll come back, right?"

"Yeah, man," Merle said, "Don't you worry 'bout that."

"What're we gonna do if he don't come back?"

Merle didn't say anything. So Daryl started to get up off the couch, and tried again.

"Merle—what are—"

Merle shoved him, then—hard. He fell back against the cushions.

"Just shut the fuck up and eat," Merle said.

When Carol saw the house for the first time, it looked just like it had in her dreams. A tired, drooping, grey old homestead. The kind you sometimes see on rural roads—empty and choked full over with weeds. It looked as if someone dropped it down there, years ago, to give it a quiet place to die.

Rosalie had drawn the house, one spring, when she was still living there. She planted flower beds along the porch. And Carol could see some of the rough outlines of them, still—the brick borders, chipping away with years of wet and sun and heat and cold. And the weather had worked into the wood siding. It peeled the paint and ate the tarpaper on the sagging roof.

Carol couldn't imagine anyone living in this place.

She got off the bike, and Daryl didn't move. His face was blank and unreadable—vaguely hostile. Like he thought he could stare down the house that way—make it shrink away and disappear. And she knew he'd snap at her if she said much of anything.

He was frightened. He tried to hide it, but she'd read those journals. She knew the kind of things that happened here, and she could see how tightly he was gripping the handlebars.

She moved through the yard. Stumbled on something in the tall grass—something that made a dull, wooden thud against her boot. She looked down, and saw a rotting skull. It had long since rolled away from the rest of the body. There was an arrow still lodged in it, deep in the bone.

Walkers. Daryl and Merle must have killed them when they made their escape.

Looking past that skull, Carol saw that there were a few more body parts hidden in the grass. Now that she was closer, she could see them clearly—the dried skin clinging to the mangled, exposed bones. Animals had gotten to the bodies since Daryl and Merle put them down, and had scattered the remains around the yard.

She wrapped her arms around herself, and headed towards the front door. Stepped over a desiccated arm that was sprawled out over the front walk. She didn't look back, but she was sure that Daryl was still on the bike, and that he had his eyes on her.

"Come on," she said to him, gently, without turning around.

"Let's get it done."

Carol was thirteen years old, and she was running through the side yard at her father's house. Around her mother's vegetable garden and under the stand of ash trees—rushing full tilt for the backyard. She'd bolted outside the moment she heard the first peal of thunder, because there was laundry on the line. If she didn't get it all in fast, it'd be soaked. So she ran out through the grass in her bare feet—didn't take the time to put on her shoes.

There was a smell of dampness in the air. Of coming rain. An electrical energy hovered over everything—that tension that rolls in just before a storm.

She rushed around the clotheslines, pulling down pillow cases and towels and bedsheets. Got through a row and headed for the next, awkwardly balancing the laundry basket on her hip. She reached up for the top of a sheet—unclipped the clothespin at the edge. Had to stand on her toes to reach.

And when she pulled it down, she saw that her father was standing on the other side.

It was long before the night of that piano recital. Before anything had happened. And he just stood there and watched her.

But the way he looked at her made her feel sick. And she wondered, standing there, if that feeling was what he really wanted. That it did something for him—that it made him feel strong to show her how weak she was in comparison.

The rain started to fall. She could feel it on her cheeks—cool, fat droplets that started slow and then poured down in buckets. And he just kept staring, as she held that sheet in her hand, and they both got soaked with rain.

And she got clumsy, then, and dropped the laundry basket on the ground.

Carol watched from the upstairs landing as Daryl carried his mother's things down from the attic. There were a couple cardboard boxes—overstuffed, so that the sides bulged. He put them down on the landing for her, and then turned away. Leaned against the wall, arms folded—looking down into the stairwell.

He didn't want much of anything to do with this process. It was obvious. She'd search the boxes alone. And she wondered, then, how to tell him what she'd figured out yesterday—that his mother was pregnant when she disappeared. Wondered if she should tell him at all—if he'd want to hear it.

She shook it off. Later. She'd think about it later.

And she crouched down over the boxes, and opened the first lid. And it gave Carol a chill to think of the last person to touch them. Edgar.

After six days went by, Merle and Daryl's daddy finally walked in the front door. And he slammed it shut, and the whole house seemed to shudder under the force of it.

Daryl and his brother watched him from the couch.

The first thing he did was go to the fridge and get a beer. Hovered at the door, with the little fridge light glowing over his face. He squinted at the space inside. Turned and popped the top of his beer can. Headed for the stairs—was going up to his room. Spoke calmly and coldly, without looking at the two of them as he passed them by.

"Where the fuck did all the bread go?"

Rose's things were just tossed into the boxes. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it. Edgar must have stuffed it all in there haphazardly—swept things off tables and dumped them out of drawers. It was a complete mess.

When he did it, he must have been very, very angry.

Carol reached into the box—dipped her hand in deep, through a pile of blouses and dresses and lingerie—felt something under them, and pulled out a Bible. Almost all of the pages had been torn out, and then meticulously taped back into the binding, one by one.

Below that, there were framed photographs. She hovered over them, a moment. There were pictures of the dogs. The children. The forest—all the subjects of Rose's drawings come to life.

And the last photograph was of Rosalie, herself.

Carol held her breath, and touched the glass. Finally, they were face to face.

And Rose was just a girl—couldn't have been much older than Maggie. She was perched on the porch stairs, beside those flower beds, with her arms wrapped around one of the dogs. Carol thought it might be Scout. And Rose's long, wavy brown hair spilled all over her shoulders, and over her blue eyelet sundress. She was smiling.

And Carol didn't know entirely why she did it, but she tucked that picture into her bag to take back with her.

There were some more books beneath that—mostly prayer collections and devotionals. There was a yellowed folder full of old school reports, with the name "Rose Connely" written on the front.

And Carol found a little jewelry box—hanging open, upside down. The latch came loose when it was thrown in with the rest, so everything inside had scattered all over. There were gold earrings caught in the lace of her lingerie. A little hairpin with an enamel lily, wedged between some books. A delicate, pearl necklace tangled in the zipper of a jacket. That necklace reminded Carol of the one her grandmother used to wear.

And below all that, there was a hairbrush, with strands of brown hair still wound in among the bristles. A toothbrush. A wallet, with Rose's driver's license and fourteen dollars still inside. Carol took out that license, and looked it over. Rosalie was just barely twenty-six when she disappeared. She was an organ donor.

Carol looked up at Daryl. He was still standing there, back turned, motionless and silent.

"Your mother didn't run away," she said, "Something else happened to her. No woman would leave all this behind."

Without any warning, he punched at the wall beside him. She started at the sound it made. His fist left a little dent in the plaster.

"Don't you ever stop talking? God."

He spat out the words, and went down the stairs to get away from her.

The Monday after her wedding, Carol stood in front of a dryer at the Laundromat. Waited for the cycle to stop spinning, and stared through the window into the tumbling mass of socks and shirts and underwear.

She could have used her Mom's machine, back home, but she didn't want to go to her parents' house to do the stuff. Now—for the first time—she didn't have to go there unless she wanted to. She was a married woman, now, and she could go it on her own.

And when the buzzer rang out, she opened the door. Scooped out Ed's underwear, and socks. Everything was warm against her fingers, and fresh and clean.

So she started matching pairs of socks. Rolling them into little balls, and throwing them in the basket.

Carol looked at the dent Daryl had made in the plaster. And she wasn't angry or upset. Daryl hadn't been thinking clearly enough to really hurt her with his words. He'd only managed a glancing blow—would have to aim a lot more steadily than that to really get to her.

But Carol decided to stay upstairs, look around, and give him a moment. So she opened his father's bedroom door, and walked inside.

There were empty bottles and cans on the floor. Rumpled clothes—Edgar's clothes. Daryl said he'd died about two years ago, now, and his dirty laundry was still piled in the corner.

She went up to the little night table, with its mirror standing above. It was coated in dust. Half the room was open to the elements—a good part of the far wall had crumbled away from fire damage. So a withered oak leaf had blown in—wet and dirty—and it stuck to the glass. She looked into the mirror, and the leaf obscured part of her face.

There was a necklace dangling over the edge of the mirror's frame. It was golden and delicate and small. A tiny cross on a thin chain. Rose must have worn it so much that she kept it out. And the little cross was propped up over a prayer card tucked into the corner of the mirror. That had to have been Rose's, too.

No one had touched it in over thirty years.

Daryl could hear Carol moving around upstairs. She was in his daddy's room. Her feet made the loose, old floorboards creak and whine and complain. That sound was so familiar. It was like his daddy was back up there again.

He stared out into the backyard from the burned out hole that used to be Merle's bedroom. There were a pile of bodies in the dead grass. The remains of the snow coated them. Clung to their rotting clothes.

When he was a kid, Daryl spent a lot of time in the backyard, running with the dogs. He'd throw the ball for them, and they'd go after it with reckless abandon.

He almost smiled, then—remembering Boss and Red and Buddy, and the smell of autumn leaves in the air.

And sometimes, Merle would watch from the back step, with a beer in his hand.

Daryl looked down, into the burned out maw that had been Merle's room. The fire tore through the foundation and you could look down into hardpacked dirt below. A charred mess of old weeds.

He shouldn't have said that to Carol. None of this was her fault.

And he sighed, hard. Decided he should go up there and talk to her.

Carol reached over, and took the prayer card from its place. There was a pastel Jesus in his dreamy white robes, cradling a lamb in his arms. The ink was getting yellow with age. And the card had an inscription, printed in gold. Carol knew that passage by heart. It was John 10:11:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep.

She turned to the back. Rose had written something there, in plain blue ink:

Luke 17:2

That was it. No quotation—just the reference. It was as if Rosalie wanted to think of that passage when she looked at the card, but didn't want anyone else to read what it was.

So Carol went to get Rose's Bible. Looked it up. Traced the lines with her finger, and whispered the words out loud:

"It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin."

And Carol knew Rose, now. Understood a lot about her. And so Carol had a sense that she was thinking of Merle when she wrote that. That she was worried about him. Felt helpless—utterly unable to do anything for him. Carol knew, from the journals, that Rose could barely even speak to Merle.

But even so, Rose felt for him. Keenly felt her own powerlessness to intervene. She just let it all happen—everything that went on around her. She watched it all from the sidelines, silent and passive. Knew she was doing it, and did it anyway. She saw it all happening, and didn't stop it—so she blamed herself for it all.

And just then—for the first time—Carol blamed her, too.

It was a hot day at the quarry—one of the first of the summer. Carol and Lori had been sitting together a bit after feeding everyone breakfast. They could see some of the men in the distance, chopping wood. Jim, and Glenn, and T-Dog. Ed was there, too.

Sophia and Carl were at their feet, sitting in a patch of grass, working on some math problems together. And Carol watched them while sipping from a bottle of water. Enjoyed Lori's company, even though they weren't really saying much of anything.

And when the kids were done with their work, Carl asked his mother to take him down to the water. It was hot, and he wanted to swim.

Sophia jumped up at that, eagerly.

"Mom, can I go with Carl?"

Carol smiled. Nodded. She had a lot of work to do—was going to do as much laundry as she could that afternoon. Sophia would just get bored hanging around at her side all day.

So she stroked back her hair, and smiled at her.

"Just you listen to Lori and don't get out too deep."

Carol spent a good amount of time sitting on the edge of the bed, reading Rose's Bible. She lost herself in the Psalms. Dove in deep, and let David's words speak to her again. And they soothed her, like always.

She hadn't read from her own Bible in over a week—hadn't really even thought about her prayers. It all seemed less important than it did before. And that made her a little sad—but only a little. She was focused on the here and now.

She sensed a movement, and saw Daryl standing in the doorway. He'd slipped upstairs so silently she hadn't heard him. He'd been watching her—she had no idea how long. She met his eyes, and immediately knew his anger had faded away. He wanted to apologize.

And it was alright. She understood.

And in that moment, a soft wind blew out over her neck—out from the open wall at her back. It filled the room with the cool, fresh scent of the melting snow.

He stepped into the room, and she got up—moved forward to meet him. He started to say something to her, but stopped short when she reached out, with both hands, for his face.

He froze—as if he wasn't really sure what she was going to do. He wasn't breathing. And she wrapped her arms around him, then. Felt his back tighten against the press of her hands. But she pushed in—moving in close against his chest. Hesitated, a moment, when he flinched.

But he had his eyes on her. One of his hands drifted up to the small of her back. It rested there, lightly.

And when she pressed her lips against his, he didn't flinch at all.

Carol had gathered laundry from most of the people she knew in camp. Was about to head off to the water when she saw a movement in the trees.

It was one of the newcomers—one of those two brothers. The ones who had shown up out of the blue the other day. He had a crossbow on his shoulder and a string of dead animals on his back.

Jacqui told Carol what she'd heard about the pair them—the younger one had saved Amy's life when he ran across her during a supply run. He and his brother had just been passing through, and came on Amy by accident. And the two of them—Amy and that younger Dixon—they'd been pretty much totally surrounded. He'd barely managed to get her out of the mess before they were both torn to shreds.

And that's how the Dixons ended up here. No one seemed quite sure what to make of them, yet—except that they seemed coldly unfriendly and intimidating.

And yet Carol found herself stepping forward, towards him. She was going to cross his path anyway, eventually, so she may as well feel the thing out.

"Uhm, hello?"

She waved, tentatively, with one hand. Caught his eye. He turned, and looked at her.

"Hello there?"

She closed the distance between them. He grunted something that must have been some kind of greeting.

"I'm Carol..." she said, softly. He stared at her. And she got a little nervous. Tried to fill the silence.

"Peletier."

He nodded, once.

"I'm doing some laundry for everyone, and I was wondering if you—would you like to throw anything in?"

He looked at her, blankly. She couldn't read his face. He just looked angry, and she wasn't entirely sure why.

She didn't know how to talk to this man—didn't even learn his first name until later. And in that moment, the idea came to her that she had absolutely nothing in common with him. Was absolutely certain they'd never be able to understand each other at all.

Carol was kissing him, and Daryl was paralyzed. His mind went totally blank as she pulled him in, gently insistent, with her hands in his hair.

His mind caught up with her a moment later. Started racing through all sorts of conflicting thoughts in a confused tangle—how little he understood what to do. How warm she was. How much he wanted her.

It was too much to take.

So he wrenched himself out of her grip. Turned away. He realized his hands were shaking, and pulled them in against his chest. Didn't want her to see.

And he thought of what his daddy would say about that. What Merle would say. He couldn't even kiss a woman.

Carol stayed there at his back. He could hear her breathing. And she didn't do anything. Just waited. And he eventually turned back to her, and looked at her face. It was still, and calm, and gentle. As if she'd wait there for him, quietly, forever.

And somehow, because of that—because of her—what Merle and his father would say didn't matter. None of that stuff mattered anymore—not really. Merle was gone. His father was dead. And he and Carol weren't.

They were here. They were alive.

And so he came back to her, and she looked up at him with those large, sad eyes. She laid a hand on his chest. And he leaned in. Kissed her—uncertain and soft, at first.

But when she pulled at his jacket—tugged it away to the floor, he found himself drawing her in with both hands. Kissing her hard and groaning in the back of his throat.

She was tugging at his shirt—unbuttoned it, and pushed it away. And then he stood with the cool air moving over his skin. And before he knew what was happening, she'd pressed him down, gently, against edge of the bed. She unwound her scarf, and laid it neatly on top his daddy's footlocker. And her coat and the rest followed.

And she was standing there before him, naked, with the wide forest spanning out at her back. He looked at her—at her ordinary, middle-aged body—and he ached for her.

The trees behind her stretched on forever. The morning sun spilled over her pale shoulders—through the collapsed wall and into the room. And with the soft light flowing over her, it seemed like she was a part of that forest. Like she belonged there in the trees—in their cool, gentle silence.

And she came to the edge of the bed. Climbed over him, and settled slowly down above him. He faltered.

"I haven't—I ain't never—"

She pressed her lips against him, again, silencing the words.

Her hand ran down his chest, and for a moment another flurry of thoughts rushed through him.

But when her hand reached his belt, he stopped thinking anything at all.

Daryl had just stepped out of the woods and into the camp at the quarry when Carol Peletier came up to him. Asked to do his laundry.

He knew right away that her husband beat her. He could see it in her face—as if it were written there.

When she spoke, it was with the gentle sort of timidity he saw in the does in the forest.

And so he was a little scared of her. Of her quiet voice. How weak and fragile she was. He didn't see any way he could have anything to do with someone like that.

So he said no.

"Nah," he said. Turned to walk away.

But then he stopped, cleared his throat, and spoke up again.

"Uhm, no… thank you."

He threw that last bit in as an afterthought. It sounded painfully awkward in his own ears.

But he'd found himself wanting to be kind to her, somehow, and that was the best he could do on short notice.

Daryl buried his face against Carol's neck, shuddering hard against the warmth of her skin—his arms wrapped tightly around her back.

He clung there a long time, and held her. Listened to her breath slowing down as it brushed over his ear. And then he rested his head in the crook of her neck— drinking in the clean, fresh scent of her skin and hair.

This woman. This beautiful, beautiful woman.

She was no burden, regardless of what she'd said before. Regardless of what everyone else thought. She wasn't weak. She was a force. Life tried to grind her into the ground over and over and over again—it beat on her with words and fists and whatever else that came up handy. Threw everything it could at her, and she still kept on going.

She could walk into the darkest place he'd ever known and defeat it with a touch of her hand.

And as if she'd read his mind, Carol touched him, then. Lifted one hand to his face. Raised his jaw so she could look at him. Ran her fingers through his hair, and smiled.

They stood in the living room together, downstairs. They were both dressed again, for the most part. And it was slightly strange between them. They didn't say much. But at the same time they were both feeling a sort of peace that had been absent since the walkers came. A rare calm. A sense that things were alright, for once.

Carol took a last look around the room. Wasn't sure if she'd ever come back here, again. And she realized there was one place she hadn't looked, yet. Daryl's old bedroom. She could see the closed door.

So she went to open it. He didn't follow—hung back, pacing around in the living room. Settled into the edge of the burned-out maw that opened up to the backyard, and stared out into the trees.

Carol pushed the bedroom door open, holding her scarf in one hand. It trailed a little on the floor, behind her.

When she walked in, she absently dropped her scarf on the bed, and looked around.

There wasn't much in there. Some books on a row of shelves. A tired looking, old bed. His window sill was covered with small, wood carvings. Little animals, and carved chains. She reached out to touch them. Her fingers lingered over a small sparrow, and its wooden wings.

And she leaned in, close. Noticed something.

The window sill was coated with thick dust. It stuck all over the carved figurines, and on the chipped paint of the window frame. But there were some clean spots in the dust—the outlines of some missing carvings. Someone had taken a few of them. Had done it recently enough that the dust hadn't made its way over the lost territory.

And she turned, then. Her foot hit an open can. Canned peaches, just lying there on the ground.

Daryl was hardly what she'd call a fastidious man, but somehow she didn't think he'd leave food lying around like that.

She drifted to the door.

"Someone's been in here," she said to him, looking out into the living room.

And that left both of them unsettled. Got them thinking. Took away much of the calm that had settled over them before.