Daryl is inadvertently triggered to feel inadequate to situations past and present.

Daryl: "You saved us, all by yourself."
Carol: "We got lucky, we all should be dead." (Strangers, S5:2)

Carol: "I don't think we get to save people anymore."
Daryl: "Then why are you here?"
Carol: "I'm trying." (Consumed, S5:6)

Carol (to Daryl):"I think she saved my life...she saved your life too, right?" (Them, S5:10)

How to Save a Life

Let him know that you know best
'Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
Pray to God, he hears you
And I pray to God, he hears you

And where did I go wrong? I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
 As he begins to raise his voice

You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came

Sung by The Fray; Writer(s): Joseph King, Isaac Slade
Copyright: Aaron Edwards Publishing, Emi April Music Inc.

"I said you'll get used to it n' you will." Daryl said, adamant and working hard at holding on to his patience. He was on the new target range inside the walls, assigned for the day to weapons training some of the least skilled adults in the community. These included the Mullet and the pantry lady. Carol had invited herself along, telling him it fit her cover story, but Daryl knew it was also to make sure no one ended up with a bolt in their ass.

"I do not believe that it is something to which I will ever become accustomed." Eugene said with a shake of his head, the feathery dark hair at his nape taking a second or two to catch up with the rapid back and forth motion. It was almost mesmerizing, that hair, at times. He was down by the targets to check his accuracy by pulling off the man shaped paper silhouette he'd been firing into.

"They're already dead, Eugene." Carol reminded him gently. "They don't feel it, they don't understand it."

"It's still a cold blooded thing." Eugene insisted, "To fire a shot through someone's brain. To watch it explode out of their skull, to see them drop—to—"

The solid thunk of a bolt penetrating the head of the practice target right next to where Eugene was standing made him scurry back so quickly he fell on his ass.

"Daryl..." Carol began, but he was already gone, stalking away.

"What bug climbed up his butt?" Olivia asked, scowling, moving quickly to give Eugene a hand up.

Carol stared at Eugene until he realized exactly what he had said, processing it slowly in his head.

"Should I go apologize to him or would that make my faux pas even more irritating to him?" Eugene asked, frowning at Daryl's retreating back.

'What faux pas?" Olivia asked.

"We lost someone...not too long ago in Atlanta...a young woman, Maggie's little sister." Carol said.

"She died in the manner I just described." Eugene said soberly, his flat voice apologetic.

"She and Daryl were...?" Olivia asked, all curiosity at the mention of another woman's name in relation to Daryl.

"He felt responsible." Carol said, her expression remorseful. "She'd been taken on his watch and we'd just found her again when she was killed." She didn't add that her own feelings of guilt were still wedged deep in her heart. She'd been there with the teenager, should've seen that Beth was about to do something reckless, should've done something to stop her, figured out a way to save her life...

"But it wasn't his fault." Eugene said, turning back towards the target and pulling out Daryl's cross bow bolt as he spoke."As I understand the terrible events of that day from my conversations with Noah while we were struggling to survive on the road, which actually resembled the post-apocalyptic film starring Viggo Mortenson more than I would like to recollect, including the cannibals and consumption of canines—"

"Eugene?" Olivia, looking a little queasy, interrupted his rambling digression from the original story.

Eugene looked over at her in puzzlement.

"Carol left too." Olivia informed him, pointing at the second retreating back.

Daryl was sitting on the porch steps of their house, whetstone in hand, sharpening the knife that had been Beth's. He tested it against the calloused skin of his thumb, pressing it into the meaty flesh of the pad, scoring a slash across the whorls of the print that then filled with the blood that sprang up out of the cut.

He rubbed the thick redness down and over the mostly healed burn scar in the flesh between his index and thumb, remembering the day he'd held the cigarette there, forcing him to feel, looking for a way out of the numbness.

He'd been better since. His people had shown him he was needed, that he was still alive and could help them stay that way too. Carol had shown him, given him this knife, and accepted him as he was without trying to change him.

He'd seen the Zen book, the one Morgan had left last night, sitting on the bedside table piled on top of his book, the one he'd brought from Atlanta. Whatever demons the man had riding him when last he and Rick had met seemed to have let loose of his soul; Daryl wondered if he'd ever get there.

They'd been working through the book, sharing pieces of their lives slowly. Carol still said less than he would've liked about what she was feeling, more comfortable talking about the commonalities in the abuse they'd both suffered than saying anything about her daughters and her attempts to keep the new kid, Sam, at arm's length. It made him feel like she didn't think he'd get it, that he hadn't lost a child so it was beyond him.

Morgan had. He'd lost his son in circumstances as horrific as Sophia's death. They shared that pain.

Daryl used the honed blade to scrape against the small circle shaped scar, peeling it off like a blemish on the skin of an apple; fresh blood welled up and joined in the stream already running down his hand to drip onto the porch steps.

"Daryl?" Carol said softly, bringing his head up to look at her, squinting against the sun at her back that made her angelic, almost transparent with the light.

He didn't respond so she sat down beside him and leaned close until she could dig the rag out of his back pocket, silently taking his hand and wrapping the fresh wounds he'd given himself, applying pressure with both her smaller hands wrapped around his to stop the bleeding.

"He didn't mean anything by it." Carol offered, willing to take the brunt of any frustration Daryl felt towards Eugene.

"Thought it was a dog." Daryl murmured, looking down at Beth's knife, turning it back and forth in his hand and then stabbing it into the floorboard next to him.

Carol tilted her head at him, waiting for more.

"We were in this place...a funeral home..." Daryl said, snorting a little, recognizing that the whole world was just one big Technicolor mortician's nightmare now.

Carol nodded, letting him know she understood he meant Beth and him.

"It was...it felt...I let it feel safe. Like it was a place I could keep her safe. Something normal again. She was all I had left. Everybody's...Hershel's daughter, Maggie's sister...I was supposed to keep her safe..."

Carol understood. The pecan grove had felt that way too. A place that she, Ty and the girls could've stayed; made a life.

"Stupid. Playing like I was—big grown up in charge—shit...I let her lead me around by the nose...do anything to make her happy...just like I used to do with Merle...Her wantin' a drink, burn down the still, burn down the past, get a dog, be one big happy family when whoever lived there got back—more'n likely they were like Gareth's bunch or the whole place's just a trap for Grady; all the lights blazin', playin' piano and singin' while I stretched out in a fuckin' coffin eatin' pig's feet..."

Carol let him ramble on, not understanding half of what he was talking about, but knowing he needed to get it out.

"I let them in. Opened the door and just let 'em in—thought it was the dog come back. She wanted to see the dog." he gave a short huff, remembering the grin on Beth's face when she asked about the mangy critter, how her goodness and ability to take joy in the little things despite everything she'd been through had given him hope...

He was dry eyed, but Carol felt his hand trembling in hers. She knew taking on the responsibility of caring for the girl had forced him to keep going after the prison fell, remembered how he'd been after Sophia, how he'd withdrawn. Without someone to force him out of it, Daryl would slow and stop, like a watch winding down. Beth had saved his life just by being there.

"I was supposed to keep her safe and I let them in—wouldn't have been in Grady if I hadn't. Still be alive if I hadn't." Daryl said dully.

"You don't know that." Carol reminded him. "She made her own choices, Daryl—as much as that hurts—just like Sophia chose to run into the woods instead of towards us for help. Beth made the choice to do what she did. You can't always protect people from themselves."

Equating Beth and Sophia made Daryl wince in sudden recognition. They'd both lost the girls who'd been everyone's children, the innocents loved by the whole family...

"You did the best you could." Carol said, trying to grant him the absolution he didn't want to accept. "It's all you can do. Forgive yourself and go on."

"So when are you going to?" Daryl asked, turning it around on her. He knew that her self-perceived sins, her failures weighed down her soul.

"I'm still trying." Carol said softly, looking down and across the street where Abe and Rosita had just met up with Morgan and Aaron and were exchanging greetings.

"Still trying...with me?" Daryl asked, his gaze following hers, his gut twisting from the vulnerability he'd felt, seeing her with Morgan last night, the fear that he was still too screwed up to help her find her way out of the dark woods, that together they'd be lost there, never moving forward; that maybe there was someone else, someone smarter, already healed; better for her...

He'd made love to her last night with quiet desperation; half afraid it would be for the last time. When he'd woken and saw she'd retrieved the Zen book from the porch sometime in the night, he'd taken it like a blow he deserved for not being good enough.

Carol quickly turned to look at him and then squeezed his wounded hand so tightly he grimaced in pain. When she saw she had his full attention she leaned in close, nose to nose, touching her forehead to his.

"With you." she whispered fiercely and then released her hold on him so she could take his face in her hands and kiss him, hard, as if she was punishing him for doubting her.

Daryl whimpered from the force of it, the feelings of overwhelming love and acceptance in it making him ache. His arms went around her, holding her closer, the blood from his hand soaking through her floral sweater, creating a fresh red bloom on its surface.

"Get a room!" Abe called from cross the street, sounding lazily amused at their semi-public display.

Daryl let the kiss end and loosened his arms so she could be free, but she held on to his face, looking up at him with those expressive eyes, full of the same emotions he'd felt in her kiss.

"I love you too." Daryl said, surprising both of them with the words neither of them had yet said to the other.

Dedication: RIP McDreamy. It was an old ship, but a great one. Condolences to Meredith Grey.

And yes, I will admit to borrowing from a little Shamy moment of sweetness there at the end if you're a BBT fan. Steal from the best.

Thanks for reading! Hope if you were perturbed by the last chapter this one felt a bit more Caryl to you, LOL! Let me know what you think if you have time.