A/N – Thank you so much for your kind reviews to the last update! I'm aiming to post a new chapter on each of my fics at least once a week so here is this week's update on Breaking Apart… Please let me know what you think. :)

Chapter 21

They were on the move again. Daryl driving under Carol's direction, heading toward the one place Carol never thought she'd see again. She wanted to go back… for Karla; she was hopeful that her friend – Daryl's sister – was still alive. And Karla's girls, Daryl's nieces, and Norman and his son. She wanted them all to be alive. But at the same time going back meant going… home. Home to the place where she'd lived – if you can call it that – with Ed. Home to the place where Sophia had lived, where Sophia had played.

The silence between them in the truck wasn't awkward, but it wasn't comfortable either. He seemed to be mulling over her latest revelation back at the school.

"I know how to use a gun, Daryl… I know all too well how to use a gun," she said softly, thoughts of that day thirteen years ago swarming into her mind. The memory of standing over her stepmother's body… of walking stiff-legged and numb to the phone on the wall… of calling her father… of leaving the message that he needed to come, that she needed him.

"It's my fault, Carebear… this is my fault…," her father had said when he'd finally come; his arms around her as she knelt on the floor and sobbed. She could still remember his arms around her, one of his hands stroking her back when her sobs turned uncontrollable and she started to vomit.

Daryl's face was puzzled, his eyes hooded as he watched her, waiting.

"I learned to shoot when I was nine, Daryl," Carol said softly, a frown dawning on her face. "My father taught me… it was his way of keeping me out of the house so I wouldn't piss off my stepmother."

She'd punctuated her last words by pulling his gun from the back of her pants and blowing a hole through a walker that approached from behind Daryl. Another walker appeared from the side of the school building, and then another limping awkwardly behind.

There hadn't been time for further explanations. Suddenly they hadn't been alone and they'd made haste into the vehicle and headed off, tires squealing and spewing up rocks as they went.

"Jus' one thing I don't understand…," Daryl started and Carol shifted in her seat so that she could face him. "Ya known 'ow to shoot this whole time and ya ain't even had a gun? Why the fuck wouldn't ya 'ad said something?" He cast a glance her way, a slight bite to his words. His face said it all; he just couldn't understand.

Carol sighed softly. "I never wanted to even touch a gun again, Daryl… I shot my stepmother; I shot her and she died and… I was happy. I was glad I did it." She bit her lip, glanced down at her hands and then back up at Daryl's profile as he drove. "I didn't want to… I didn't want to be the kind of person who could be glad about something like that. It makes me sick…" She let her words trail off and frowned.

"So ya kept it quiet," Daryl muttered, casting a quick glance her way before turning his attention back to the road.

Carol nodded; her voice low and haunting as she spoke, "I kept it quiet."

"Daddy, I can't let you do this," Carol sat across the table from her father in the jail's only visiting room, her hands in his even as the shackles that bound him cut down into his wrists. Her eyes were red, her cheeks wet, and her lips chapped. "You can't…," she started before he cut in.

"Shush now… I did this. I shot Jolene. This blubbering needs to stop. You've gotta keep it quiet now. You hear?," Carol's father said sternly.

The guards were right outside the visiting room; maybe her father's whispered words weren't loud enough to hear, but maybe they were. Maybe her father knew the guards were listening, but maybe he didn't.

She did what she was told though. She kept it quiet. She was there the day her father was sentenced. She'd held her breath in the courtroom as they waited for the judge's decision. After it came, after he was sentenced to life, he'd turned to her, his last moments of semi-freedom before the guards came to take him away.

"Daddy, I didn't lose the baby… I didn't lose the baby… you're going to be a granddad," she smiled tearfully as she exclaimed the quiet words in his ear as they embraced, the last time – although she hadn't known it then – she would ever hug her father. Words just for them; the first hope she'd felt in weeks, and she needed him to feel it too.

Her father put a hand to her cheek and smiled, his eyes shining. "If it's a girl… you name her for your mama?," he said softly. He didn't mean her stepmother… he meant her birth mother, his first wife, the woman he still considered the love of his life.

Carol choked down a sob as she gazed at him; she smiled forlornly, "Sophia... just like mom, if it's a girl I'll call her Sophia."

Daryl was quiet beside her as he drove. Carol didn't know if he understood, if he hated her for it, or what he felt, but she let the silence fill the truck cab as they traveled along the roads. She turned her face to look outside the window at the passing trees that rushed by and that's how she stayed, letting the silence steep between them.

Ten or twenty miles up the road, when she felt his hand, warm and rough, cover her own where it rested on the bench seat, she didn't turn. But her breath caught in her throat for a moment and the slightest smile crossed her lips. A smile of hope as their fingers interlocked and she felt the comfort of him sitting beside her.

And then the deer darted across the road in front of them, and the brakes were squealing and Carol felt her whole body jerk forward, her face slamming hard into the windshield, and she felt the air rush past her as she was thrown, airborne…