WARNING: CONTENT MAY BE DISTURBING FOR CERTAIN READERS.

Hey, everyone!

I have received so contradicting opinions about the last chapter, I don't really know what to make of them.

This chapter is also a very dark one, it's focused mainly on Daryl's emotional journey, gives answers to why he behaved the way he did and also has a very violent part. In the end, there's still a major cliffhanger. You won't be able to definitively find out what happens until the last part is posted which will be really soon. I tried really hard to make it a two shot, even if it meant chapters bigger than 6000-7000 words, but it honestly couldn't be done. Everything will be explained in the last part.

Personal attacks are not cool and it's terrible for me to feel the need to defend my story. I'm trying my best here, insulting the readers was never in my to-do list. Any kind of criticism is welcome, but rudeness in not necessary. Sincere apologies to people who felt too emotionally disturbed by the previous chapter.

On the other hand, you always surprise me :) Most of you liked the metaphor about fear. Well, I can confess now that my personal favorite was the one about death.

Peta2 made sure once again that your eyes won't suffer from my errors.

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


A week earlier

"What the fuck are you doing?"

When he grabbed her shoulders, the sensation couldn't have strayed farther from what Carol longed for. Instead of crashing her against his broad chest the way she had played the scene out over and in her mind, sequestering any consideration of a different outcome due to sheer fear of getting cold feet and never risking a fleeting kiss, he squeezed her harshly only to shove her away.

She was gasping raggedly now, fingertips petting the lips that had barely brushed his before he jerked backwards as if he was jolted by electricity. Glaring down on her with an unfathomable flash in his eyes and every muscle on his face twitching in distress, fists balling and unfurling alternatively, he looked like threat and danger incorporated. Not having a clue what she was supposed to do now, next, ever again, she stretched out a hesitant hand, attempting to touch him once again. "Daryl-"

He flinched, yanking her hand away. "Get your hands off me."

Not much she could do at this point. She wasn't even sure what hurt the most; rejecting her, looking nothing short of disgusted by her advances, or regarding her like she was the enemy. "I-I thought you felt the same w-way," she stuttered, a gut-wrenching pain scorching her inside out.

"You're a real piece of work, ain't you?" As his knuckles collided with the grainy surface of the wall, she didn't flinch, didn't even blink, she was expecting that. She knew he'd have to vent some pent-up tension and he was oblivious to other ways of blowing off steam. It was either the wall or her face and she was convinced beyond any doubt that he would never hit her, wouldn't even consider hitting her. In fact, the odds for him to punch her were even lower than kissing her and the sourness of this thought made her almost smirk acrimoniously.

She swallowed hard a huge lump blistering in her throat, jaw trembling, striving to shelter the remnants of a trampled dignity.

Daryl took a step closer, towering over her. "Don't you ever dare touch me again," he drawled poignantly, steadfast emphasis stressing each word hissed through gritted teeth.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, nodding, tears dripping on the ground.

"Stay the fuck away from me."

She nodded again and the next moment he had spun around and marched away, almost fled like a panic-stricken animal, throwing as much distance between them as humanly possible, the clomping thud of heavy boots echoing in the prison yard. As she regarded his shrinking figure tentatively, the fragile, delicate fibril that always envisioned connecting their beating hearts cleaved abruptly and sent her reeling.

She had died once, emotionally, the day Sophia stumbled out of the barn. This could count as her second inner death, the day she was shocked by the realization that she would never share this hellish reality arm in arm with him. The only way she could keep forcing one foot in front of the other was to make peace with absolute loneliness. And so she did. But dying twice inside was a pivotal moment she would never manage to reverse again; she couldn't recover from the same grief. Physical death meant nothing to her anymore.


Chaos elicited, but Daryl registered nothing, his eyes never averting from hers.

The sinister leer in Philip's face froze when he and his henchmen were flanked from everywhere around. One of the two men they hadn't met before collapsed face down on the mud, the back of his head penetrated by a bullet from Carl's gun, blood and brain matter spurting all around. Maggie shot from a distance, the bullet twanging in Martinez's neck and Glenn finished him off aptly, slicing his skull with a hatchet. Rick and Shumpert tumbled on the ground, clasped together in a hand-to-hand combat to the bitter end. Michonne, attacking from the spot behind Daryl decapitated the last man with one single, gracious rotation of her katana.

But the rabid havoc surrounding him didn't suffice to snap him out of the haze; her blank gaze magnetized his, pinning him on spot as if he was enchanted by a spell.

It was only when Glenn bent over her and readjusted her head in a horizontal posture, ripping Carol's vitreous peer away from him that he blinked. It was only when the Governor intervened between him and the sight of her recumbent form that he gasped. It was only when the whirring blade lacerated the wind and his restraints crumpled on the ground that he felt his teeth grinding painfully, seeing nothing but red and he lunged at the worthless scum staggering before him, seeking nothing but blood.

Slamming him flat on his back, punching him again and again until his knuckles ached and Governor's face was savagely disfigured, Daryl derived a feral ebullience from the mere fact that he was groveling defenseless, not standing a chance to retaliate the merciless blows he received under his unyielding clutch, like a once upon a time lethal reptile deprived of its venom. Kneeled atop him, completely spaced out, his defense mechanisms working overtime to maintain his focus on the object of his wrath; otherwise he might glance up and realize he was the one defeated, the one broken, even if he beat the man beneath him to death. His head snapped when the repetitive yelp of his name punctuated through his throbbing ears, lashing him out of his trance and he met Glenn's gaze, eyes still blazing with hatred.

Glenn was calling for him to hustle to his aid while his hands were swiftly bouncing over Carol's chest. Maggie was leaning against a tree trunk, white as a sheet and momentarily unable to assist, her pregnancy dizziness getting the best of her. Rick had gained the upper hand in his fight with Shumpert but was still unavailable. Michonne was standing next to Daryl, it was not a secret that the definitive blow on the Governor would be hers, everyone knew, even if Daryl had no recollection of it. And Carl… In moments like these, of devastating tragedy, Carl still dredged the childhood hibernating inside him; that's what he was doing now, crying next to the figure of his surrogate mother, of his really adored step mom he rarely bothered to listen to, stroking her boot. Daryl was a poor choice; still, he was the only one Glenn could address for assistance.

A firm grasp squeezed Daryl's shoulder. "Go," Michonne muttered. "He's mine." And he was scrambling to his feet again, his mind failing miserably to keep up with a hyperactive body functioning on autopilot.

"We meet again, Philip" she sneered, grazing her katana on his throat. "Long time no see." The Governor, the man who had rampaged and leeched on their lives with neurotic obsessiveness, taking Merle and Andrea away from them, whimpered like a pathetic whelp and a sting of disappointment stirred in Michonne's stomach. She had wished him to resist, she had wished him to fight back, prolong his death and only rendering it more painful.

Daryl sank on his knees to help Glenn. He knew what was happening. He knew why he was there. He also knew the precise moment his mind flipped; it was a slow procedure, a slippery slope inexorably steering there. First, it was her wide, terrified eyes, glowing from fear and inhumane effort to breathe turning misty. Then it was the brusque, gasping squeaks scatter and dwindle until they completely ceased, succeeded by the clutch of her fingers loosening around her strangler's wrists. Finally, it was her arms slumping on the ground, her jolting legs coming to a standstill and her entire body stretched out limp even after the smothering grip around her neck was forgone. He knew what he had to do, right there right at that moment. And he did nothing.

"Daryl, help me," Glenn urged him.

His jaw slackened and he just gawked at the sapless body he idly recognized belonging to her, but it only made sense as a ghostly doppelganger haunting her fleshly counterpart; the bright eyes, hollow and vacant, fastidiously staring into nothingness, the familiar flame flickering inside them snuffed out; the cadaverous pallor strewn across her freckled skin evicting the pink-tinged shade.

"Daryl-"

"Again!" he barked at Glenn's face, perceiving Maggie crying at the outskirts. "Shut up!" he screamed at her, oblivious to the fact that her soft whimpers were barely audible juxtaposed to his deranged wailings. Suddenly everything was too real. This wasn't a nightmare, or a bleak illusion he could sweep away. This was Carol lying dead before his eyes.

Glenn resumed CPR doing a few more rounds and then he drew back again, biting his lips.

Daryl shot him a murderous look. "Again!" he yelled once more, but his voice choked into a sob.

Glenn flicked him a plaintive glance, cringing, incapable of forcing himself to lock gazes with the man slouched across him. Something was … It was beyond pain the ominous halo oozing off him.

Registering the other man's inertia, Daryl thrust his weight over her, bumping down her chest; he, himself, drowning in the cerulean, unruffled oceans of her eyes. He was sobbing violently the entire time; spasms penetrated his body through and through, every single sinew bolted evidently beneath his skin. Tears dripped on her collarbone and the ground around them. He groaned painfully and gritted his teeth to steady himself, but kept vibrating head to toe nevertheless; he bungled to perform properly the even and deep compressions, the curve of his floundering, quivery elbows hamstrung his herculean effort to reanimate her defunct heart. Pinching her nose, he contrived to puff a ragged breath between her parted lips compelling her chest to partially billow upwards; striving in full blast and not even close to be dubbed adequate, he put everything he had into a last resort effort to muster up his courage and regain full command of his renowned mastery in self-control.

Hold your shit together, lil' bro. For just an elusive, fleeting moment, he honestly believed it was something within his powers, that it was attainable to take this up to him and somehow pull it through. But when he withdrew a little to inhale deeply, summoning every grain of equanimity still flowing in his veins to blow air into her, he lapsed into allowing another peek to dart on her open eyes again, on the still, blue, glazing transparency stripped even from the most imperceptible speck of warmth and liveliness.

And he collapsed. He melted in her agape mouth, crying and moaning, sucking agonizing breaths that failed to reach his lungs, fisting her grown hair and pounding her chest boisterously. It was the moment he surrendered. He surrendered irreversibly and unconditionally in a harrowing bawl jammed with whimpers and muffled, unfathomable pleas as he lamented both her bereavement and his thoughtless acts. Pussy.

Glen searched Rick's eyes for guidance. If they were going for it, for the far-fetched, irrational hope to resuscitate the empty vessel of Carol's figure, this was not the way. Someone else had to take over, someone composed and strong, to delve into this seemingly infeasible purpose; someone who wouldn't have to face the fear of getting his face bit off simultaneously with a gun pointed to his face. Their leader had just plucked his knife out of his rival's eye socket and was panting, taking in the scene between Glenn, Daryl and Carol wide-eyed. Rick nodded.

"Let me," the Asian man croaked, Daryl's utter devastation goading him back to action.

Maggie dropped on her knees next to him, swallowing down dizziness and nausea, resolved to undertake the mouth to mouth process. They worked together meticulously, scrupulously, with the accuracy of radars and the efficiency of robots to coerce in Carol's lifeless frame the vigor to surmount this and claw back to vitality.

Daryl had collapsed, prostrated with his face buried in the crook of Carol's neck, his woe and gut wrenching dissolution further hampering their impossible task. Clasping her limp hand in his, squeezing it to his lips and nesting it in his chest, he replicated this identical back and forth movement like a defective, beyond repair broken record player stuck in an endless loop.

But no amount of sobs perforating him through and through with the easiness of a sieve or spasms jarring his frame as if in conduct with an electrified wire had the sovereignty to dilate time and launch him back to an alternative universe where he could re-scribble their history and trigger a different outcome to this infernal present. Repentance, second chances, lost opportunities, unuttered apologies, bottled up confessions, stifled declarations gushed into his bloodstream, rendering him into a corpse identical to the one he was oscillating over. Petrified to the core, his sizzling blood converted into ice as it progressively sank into him that no amount of castigation and self-battering would suffice to bestow upon him an opportunity to annul the past, to retract his venomous indictments, to claim back what he had heedlessly tossed away. It was past due time. Repercussions percolated and all the regret of the world would be of no avail anymore. Pay back's a bitch, as Merle would leer.

He wanted his big brother to storm in and fix everything, jostling and shouldering and punching his way till he got the job done; Merle's mode of fending for himself and occasionally for both of them. It was ridiculous this was the moment he missed him the most, but he needed him right there and right now to burst in, all bravado and bullying, and save the day, save him, save her. Nothing could resist Merle's wrath. The terrestrial axis would snap like a twig and the world would cease to revolve if Merle ordered so. No one would dare to die on him if Merle forbad so.

He knew she loved him. Everyone knew and even if he was the last one to belatedly get the memo, he eventually caught up. Especially since he had returned with Merle it would take a blind man to refute the fact that she loved him. And especially since he had returned with Merle he had been gradually musing the idea of being something more with her. Things had seemed good and normal for a while, even with the endless fighting between Merle and Glenn, even with the impending attack of the Governor. He had his brother, he had their patchwork, spotty but bonded family, he had her. Never in his life had he more; he never had anything, actually, and suddenly he had everything, he was full, sated, feeling like the king of the world. Carol had convinced him that he was a man of honor and it was the first time he had all he wanted, good stuff, and he honestly believed he deserved them. And he was ready for the next step. With her.

And then his brother had tried to eat him alive. Merle had gone and gotten himself killed and Daryl was the one to put him down, facing his milky eyes, his groans, his gnashing teeth, his mouth drooling the fresh blood of a kid lying on the ground. It was enough to shock him back to reality, to his fate, his life. He could never have nice things. Not without them being ripped away from him. He didn't deserve them and each time he dared to clasp something he desired and claim it for himself, the universe made sure to slap him back into self-consciousness and snatch it back. Everything he loved was bound to die. Like his mom. Like Merle. And, as much as he deeply and sincerely cared for every member of their group, there was only one person left in the world he ever loved even more than them and was still alive. Only one person he loved just because that's how he felt, not because she was blood, not because he had to, only because he had never contrived to reason out a way not to.

So, he backed off. The die was cast as the last shovel of dirt scattered on Merle's grave. People he cared about stayed alive as long as he stayed away from them. He had to eventually learn his lesson once and for all, before it was too late for Carol as well. And when she took the initiative to make the first move he almost flung her over the perch of the watch tower. He could never touch her, he would never touch her. That would be equal to a death sentence. He kept his part of the deal with the universe, watched her walk around hurt and broken and never even considered to give in to the temptation to run to her.

How had this happened then? He had paid the fee for her to stay alive. Why was she lying dead in front of him? What kind of deity steering their lives would allow that? The last words he ever told her in a shared moment between them were to Stay the fuck away from him when he only yearned for the opposite. And he never got to savor her kiss, he never got to kiss her back, showing her how he really felt about it. Why did she have to die anyway? Why didn't he know that? He would have done everything differently, they would have both shared a few moments of happiness before the inevitable knocked on their door.

On and on, he droned the beseeching chant of her name as the uncompromising finality of death dangled over him like a double-bladed spear, still sobbing, sprawled over her, still holding on to her hand. The squish greasy sound of her body twitching on the muddy ground, in sync with the recurrent smacking of Glenn's interlaced fingers against her sternum, drove him crazy. He couldn't stand this noise, it slithered inside his brain or whatever was left of it and reverberated incessantly between the walls of his skull, a constant reminiscent that her life was slipping away from him. He groaned and draped his free hand around her stomach, digging his nails in her waist like a grappling hook, struggling to pin life back inside her. "Don't leave me. Please, don't leave me," he keened and Glenn cringed at the bold anguish, his stomach churning from the need to quit and puke.

"Let as work, Daryl," he breathed exhausted, not having the slightest idea how long he had been repeating the same monotonous procedure over and over again.

Daryl didn't stir. His sanity long gone, immersed in the havoc of the ultimate calamity, unable to ebb away the steel grip of terror and agony. His heartbeat erratic, hammering against his chest, throbbing in his ears, tuning him out of reality and nailing him right in the center of his tragedy at once. His breathing nonexistent, almost like hers, the only alteration between them was that his suffering still wormed its path out of his throat morphed in choked screeches. He was panting, unable to suck air as if the oxygen had transmuted into viperous flecks, it was only scorching his lungs, the moribund feeling gaining footing inside him.

Maggie cast furtive, incredulous glances at Daryl's writhing form, ashamed for witnessing the dauntless hunter dissolving into pieces. "Damn it, Carol," she sniffled, barely withholding her own tears.

Her mind drifted back to their first hunting lesson when they had stomped into a clearing soundlessly and collectively marveled at the sight of a pair of deer -a hart and a doe, Daryl had explained later- hopping around each other, magnificent and noble and insouciance all at once. Until an arrow had accurately sliced the female's skull. Maggie's chin had trembled at the sound of the yowling caterwaul of the hart as it shuffled closer to his companion with another arrow dipped inside him to draw his last breaths next to her. This is why this ultimate devastation resembled to a déjà vu. The man who never hesitated before a quandary, the man who never blinked from fear, who never hid from danger, who never allowed as much as a single glimpse of weakness to any of them; flapping on the ground, sagged and helpless, vibrating like a heap of spineless sinews. She wondered if Carol knew how he felt about her. He had always been a riddle for everyone in the group, impossible to be rationed out, but now he was laid all raw and suffering, unraveled pathetically like a broken maze, just a man, any man, mourning his mate.

Had the times they lived been different she would have never chewed a chunk of cooked deer in her life. Had the times been different Maggie would get the time to mourn her mother, their other demises, Carol. Had the times they lived been different she would have never permitted Daryl Dixon to be witnessed in such a condition. But times were what they were. They weren't different. The times allowed leeway for humans turning into monstrosities, for ex law-abiding civilians to mutate into monsters with no legal consequences, for the walking dead to roam the earth. And Maggie had an enlightening epiphany, right at that moment, as she blew air into Carol's mouth with her thoughts waltzing at the unborn fetus growing protected, insulated inside her womb that the walking dead prowling around were not the breeds of the damned, godforsaken humanity; it was them. This bunch of derelicts stitched together seamlessly in a makeshift formation with the sole purpose of survival incised in the blank tablets of their souls with chisels.

The peripheral view of the couple hovering over her body registered Rick approaching them cautiously, colt in hand, forefinger on the trigger. He was battered, out of breath, a mask of pain struggling with the grim determination his heinous duty dictated. Glenn and Maggie exchanged a terrified look as the former kept working on Carol and Maggie whirled her head, shaking it wide-eyed in Rick's direction.

Their leader accessed them from an angle beyond Daryl's visual range while he had his back turned on him. Not that it made any difference. His hiked beyond any reasonable degree acute audition performance caught the rattling leaves, nevertheless, instantly aware of the encroaching peril.

"A step closer and you're a dead man," Daryl snarled with a contorted voice, before lifting his head to reveal a swollen, scrunched up face, distorted from torment and misery, and a set of grayish bloodshot eyes.

Rick stopped dead in his tracks and lifted his hands defensively, gun dangling from his finger.

Daryl gawked at him pungently, aping a carnivore predator stalking his prey, ripe to lunge forward and tear its flesh in shreds. "Get the fuck away from us," he drawled, shielding Carol with his body, still holding on to her hand, the lethal twinkle still flickering in his eyes forced their leader to step back in retreat; the ultimatum chiming crystal clear in his warped voice.

And then they heard it.

It was the moment Michonne's katana swung gracefully, mutilating The Governor, before she muzzled his suffering shrieks with the maimed part of his alleged masculinity. It was the moment Carl bowed his head, coming to terms with losing a second motherly figure in the interval of months. It was the moment Glenn whispered to Maggie he was getting tired and she drew back to switch places with him. It was the moment Rick's gun was back in hand aiming at Carol, safety still on. It was the moment Daryl's unoccupied hand pawed his own with a single, fluid motion and pointed it at him, safety off.

His head snapped down, eyes transfixed on her glassy ones.

While Maggie covered her mouth with her hand and Glenn threaded his fingers through his hair, Rick approached them, gait cautious but obstinate and Daryl's leveled arm trailed his orbit, barrel directed sternly on him without exchanging as much as a glance with each other.

The center of their small universe, Carol, consumed every grain of their attention as a gagged, snarling sound escaped her throat, albeit she remained dead still.

Maggie shivered and Carl sobbed again; Glenn cussed, Rick gasped and Daryl stopped breathing.

"Wait!" Maggie cried, jumping in the middle of the two raised guns, arms wrapped around her slightly protruding belly.

To be continued…


Now you know pretty much everything about Daryl's motives behind his actions. Not that it makes any difference if he never gets the chance to fix whatever can be fixed. I wanted to break him to the core, didn't think the walls he built after Merle died could be knocked down any other way, unless he came face to face with ultimate disaster.

This is the factor that differentiated his behavior compared to Carol's behavior in The Pond. I just couldn't bring him to hold it together, but I believe the parallels with The Pond are clear to you now.

Thank you all for reading :) A review would be much appreciated.

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