Carol had discovered Friday night, or Saturday morning, she wasn't really sure which because time had sort of puddled together to become one big blob, that she had the ability to cry until she actually vomited. What surprised her more, though, than this realization was that she had the ability to keep crying after that. In fact, she had the ability to cry and then vomit until she'd reached the point that now it was just crying and gagging, having long since run out of anything that her stomach could even begin to scrape up for the sake of vomiting.

And the days and nights had been long since then. She'd started crying without even really being sure why she was crying. She'd started because of what Shane had said, but she wasn't foolish enough for even a moment to believe that's why she'd continued crying. She felt, a little, like she'd just taken that opportunity to start, and once she'd started it was as though her brain decided that she should keep going, and so it had offered her everything she could possibly use as fuel to keep going.

Somehow she had decided, mostly after she realized that she couldn't actually vomit anymore if she wanted to and the gagging fits would pass, that her bathtub appeared to her to be the most comfortable place that she could imagine. She had pulled herself over the side of it and flopped there, curled up in the bottom of the tub, thinking that the crying would pass.

And when the crying didn't pass, she had flopped back over the side and crawled through the little apartment, only to return crawling back with a pillow and blanket that she meant to use to sleep in the bathtub…just until the crying stopped.

And when the crying didn't stop, but waned a little, and her brain told her that it wasn't done and didn't want to stop crying, no matter how desperately she wanted to stop, she'd crawled back through the apartment and returned with all the little relics that she needed to build a shrine to her sadness in the tub, and that had helped, for a while, to fuel the crying that her brain seemed to desperately need to do.

Sunday morning, she had crawled one last time from her tub haven to the living room and had, through blurred eyes, called Lula to tell her that she was sick and wouldn't make it to work. As she hung up the phone, she didn't feel bad about the lie. It wasn't really a lie. She felt the worst that she could ever remember feeling right now. She crawled back to her tub and shimmied her way back down among all the treasure that she'd squirreled away in her porcelain nest. Out of bare necessity and lack of ability to do otherwise, she slept some, but every time she woke up, she plucked from her brain one of the many reasons it offered her to cry, and she continued her efforts to bawl about everything she'd ever thought she might need to bawl about.

She wasn't sure what time it was when she heard keys rattling outside her apartment, but she sat up a little in the tub, clutching some of her collection to her, and held her breath. Michonne had a key to her apartment because she insisted on it. Andrea had the key that Carol had originally designated for Daryl, assuming that if nothing else the three of them might need a phone, and they considered it an unnecessary expense for their own apartment. Carol didn't know which of the two it was outside her apartment now, but she hoped that if she held her breath and kept very quiet, they wouldn't find her tub sanctuary and would assume that she was out somewhere.

When the bathroom door swung open, though, and Michonne walked in and looked down on her, Carol realized that her spot was not as invisible as she had hoped. At the sight of Michonne's wrinkled forehead looking down at her, Carol couldn't hold her breath and longer and she let out the sobs she'd been joking back since the tinkling beyond the door had begun.

Michonne sighed. She sat down on the floor, leaning against the side of the tub.

"Dean's got the girls. I asked him to take them for the day when Lula called and told me that you sounded like you were on the verge of death," Michonne said. "So tell me, Carol, why are you in the bathtub with half the shit you own? What is all this anyway?"

Michonne reached into the bathtub like she was going to finger some of the items and Carol tucked the things closest to her fingertips protectively under her. Michonne withdrew her arm, frowned, and stared at Carol.

Carol knew that Michonne probably thought she was crazy. Who wouldn't? Besides the pillow and blanket that she'd brought in to feather her nest, she had her mother's nightgown that she'd kept since she was boxing up her mother's things right after she died. She had a picture of her parents. She had a picture from her wedding day…one of the last days she'd thought her fairtytale was coming true and that she'd met the man of her dreams and would begin her life with him, the life she'd so meticulously planned out. She had a soft yellow baby blanket with bunnies on it, the first and only thing she'd bought when she'd found out she was pregnant. It had been a spur of the moment purchase, a silly decision she'd made while walking the aisles of the store. She had all the things there that reminded her that her life was a train wreck that she'd never even seen coming. How could she explain to Michonne that all the treasures in her soggy bathtub nest were just the broken pieces of something she wasn't sure she could ever put back together?

"I'm fine," Carol squeaked out. "You didn't have to come."

"Carol," Michonne said with a sigh, "you're in a bathtub and your face is coated with snot. You called in sick to a job that you actually like. You're not fine. Now, I'm not judging, but throw me some kind of bone here. What's going on?"

"I'm divorcing Ed," Carol sobbed out. "My life is never going to be what it was supposed to be."

Just having Michonne there, that concerned look plastered on her face, spurred Carol on. There was something about crying for an audience for the first time that seemed to renew even the tears that she thought had dried up and she sobbed until she gagged. Michonne backed up a little from the edge, but settled back down a second later when she seemed to realize that gagging was really all that was going to come of this.

"Are you really crying over Ed?" Michonne asked. "Or are you crying because you realize that Ed will never be what you wanted him to be?"

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Carol protested. "It was never supposed to be like this. We were supposed to grow old together! We were supposed to have babies and a dog and a house with green shutters." She started to sob again, then, with the same wild abandon that she had earlier. "I didn't want it all…I didn't want everything…that's all that it was supposed to be."

Michonne wiped her nose with the back of her hand absentmindedly and then turned around, yanking the toilet paper roll out of the dispenser. She rolled off a ball of toilet paper and passed it to Carol.

"So it won't be with Ed, Carol, you can still have those things," Michonne said, sniffing a little.

"You don't understand," Carol said, curling into herself and hugging her possessions closer to her.

Michonne snickered a little.

"When I threw Dean out, after I caught him cheating…I ate a gallon of ice cream in one sitting. Butter Pecan. I sat right there on my couch and I ate the whole damn thing without stopping while I watched fucking home movies of everything I thought was our perfect life. Afterwards, I hid the container in the bottom of the trashcan because I didn't want anyone finding it and giving me some stupid speech about hormones, or telling me one more time that men were going to do the things that men did and that I'd never get him back if I ate entire gallons of ice cream. And then I puked the whole gallon back up…I think I even made a little extra while it was in there so that I could keep going for longer," Michonne said. She trailed her arm over the side of the tub and brushed some of Carol's hair out of her face, now making sure that she didn't go anywhere near the items that Carol was hugging. "We've all got those moments, Carol, when we realize that somewhere we took a wrong turn and we're headed on a scenic tour through Shitville, but things get better."

Carol looked at Michonne a minute. Then she gathered up her items as best she could and flopped to the other side, her back to Michonne.

"You can say that. Your life is just fine," Carol said.

Michonne chuckled a little.

"From the outside it is," Michonne said, "but everyone's life looks a lot different from the inside than it does from the outside. I still lost my fairytale marriage."

"But you've still got your girls," Carol said, choking back a sob.

"And I'm a single mother, Carol, to two infants. The mashed carrot lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be," Michonne said.

"My husband pushed me down a flight of stairs and killed my baby," Carol said, burying her face into the pillow that she'd rolled against.

"OK," Michonne said. Carol thought she heard her voice crack a little. After a second Michonne continued. "You're killing me here, Carol…get out of tub and I'll marry you. You can paint the shutters green, I never had much interest in the color anyway. I'll give you one of the girls and I'm pretty damn sure there was someone handing out puppies at the A and P yesterday."

Carol almost laughed at the comment. She rolled a little, caught somewhere between her sadness and a little irritation that Michonne, although wiping at her eyes, didn't seem to realize the full gravity of the situation.

"You don't understand," Carol said again, not knowing what else to say.

"Carol, there are many, many men out there. You have a million chances to find one that wants your dream. Hell, most men would love to find a woman whose dreams would take so little effort to make come true," Michonne said. "That's one thing Dean always used to bitch about, he said I wanted too much out of life. I guess, though, we all just want what we want."

"No one is going to want me, Michonne, and they're not going to want what I want," Carol protested, rolling back over now to face Michonne again.

"Seriously, Carol? And why are they not going to want you?" Michonne asked.

"I'm used up," Carol said. "I saved everything for Ed. I put all my eggs in that basket and then Ed smashed them all. I'm not good for anything but sex anymore, and I turned Shane Walsh down. Shane was right, no one is going to want me."

"Shane Walsh?" Michonne asked. "Shane Walsh is an asshole. Good for you if you turned him down. That's why he said that, though. You hurt his pecker's feelings, so he decided to hurt yours. Plenty of men out there would want you, Carol, and not just for sex. You're funny, and you're smart, and sweet…and you're pretty…I promise that if I ever decided to give up men I'd snatch you off the market before you even knew what hit you."

"Stop it," Carol said. "Stop trying to make me laugh. I'm serious, Michonne."

"Me too," Michonne said. She unrolled more toilet paper and handed it to Carol, taking some to clean up her own face. "What were you doing talking to Shane Walsh anyway? You never told me what happened with that Dixon guy. One minute you were all about him and the next you were just like 'nope' and that's all I ever got."

"It was about sex for him too," Carol said. "He wasn't the kind of man that would want my dream."

"Did you tell him about the shutters?" Michonne asked. "Because sometimes men can particular about exterior decorating. You've got to ease them into the really big details like green shutters. Show him a picture of something…he might have thought you meant like baby poop green, and that might have been the deal breaker."

Carol snickered in spite of herself.

"You're an asshole," Carol said.

"Yeah," Michonne said. "I know. I've heard it before. What about your little dollhouse? Did you even go and look at any of them?"

"I don't have that kind of money, Michonne," Carol said. "I'm not going to make enough money to buy a house working at Lula's or at that sinkhole of a bar. This is as good as it gets. The whole thing, Michonne, the whole stupid dream, that's all it was…it was just a dream."

"Carol, this divorce, it's taking care of itself. Ed wants out of Sweet Junction. You think your life here is screwed up? Well Ed's is worse. He's being complacent about the whole thing. It looks like he's going to give you everything we're asking for just to get his ticket out of here. Soon you're going to have the money for a down payment on one of those houses if you want one," Michonne said. "Hell if you pick it out now I'll make sure it has green shutters when you move in."

Carol sat up in the bathtub then, her back against the back of the tub, her body angled toward Michonne. She'd finally stopped sobbing, and as far as she could tell, she felt like she was cried out…at least for a while.

"You really think that it's just going to be that easy?" Carol asked. "You think that Ed's just really going to walk away and leave Sweet Junction?"

Michonne shrugged.

"That's what it looks like," she said. "One way or the other, Carol, you're getting money from him. For nothing more than the two sure attacks that we have on record you're getting money. You're going to have your house and your damn shutters. The rest will come."

Carol mopped at her damn face and pushed back her hair where some of it was clinging to the wetness. She sighed, realizing her ribs and back and everything else ached worse than she'd thought it would.

"You really think that?" She asked.

Michonne nodded.

"I tell you what," Michonne said, wrestling to her feet. She leaned over and started to gather up the items in the tub. "You let me put this stuff in your room and you use this tub for what the slumlords intended it for. Take a shower. Get dressed. I'm going to pick us up something to eat from Lula's because I don't see any wrappers or crumbs in your bed here so I'm guessing you haven't eaten. Then you and I are going to drive over there and we're going to look at those houses they're building. I'm going to call Tyreese Scott and see if I can't get the keys to some of them. Can we do that?"

Carol sighed and pulled herself up. She was a little lightheaded and she held on to the wall.

"Be careful," Michonne said. "We don't need you cracking your skull open. Take your shower. I'll be back before you know it. Hell, if you want we can even stop by the A and P and see if the puppies are still there."

Carol chuckled a little. She reached her arms out and Michonne leaned into her, despite the fact that her arms were loaded down with all the items that she'd collected out of the tub.

"Thank you," Carol said. When she pulled back from hugging Michonne, Michonne smiled at her.

"No problem," she said. "The next time I eat a gallon of ice cream I'll call you. You can hold my hair back and we'll call it even.

Michonne slipped out of the bathroom and Carol stood in the tub until she heard the door close and heard Michonne's keys tinkling outside. She started to strip then and got out, turning on the water. She felt a little better than she had, and she hoped that one good weekend of tub surfing was really all she needed.

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

When Michonne stepped out of Carol´s apartment and locked the door, she sighed. She knew where Carol was at right now. She´d been there before. If anything she was envious of any woman in the world that had never been there. There was something truly heartbreaking about the moment when you realized that you'd spent so much time constructing a life in your mind, and that life just wasn't what you had in reality.

She knew that it would pass, though, and that Carol would land on her feet. Carol was stronger than she even gave herself credit for, and Michonne could see that. Even nesting in a bathtub didn't disprove that in her mind. She knew, because she'd heard it from others so many times, that people tended to have to this strange misconception of what constituted strength in a person. They seemed to believe that things like crying in bathtubs or eating ice cream until you puked because you thought your heart was broken showed you were weak. Michonne knew that wasn't true, though. Strength came in a lot of different shapes and sizes, but what really defined it, at least in her mind, wasn't how many times you got knocked down and had to crawl around finding yourself, it was how many times you got up at the end of it all, swept up the pieces, and kept going.

As Michonne turned from leaving the apartment, set on picking up lunch at Lula's she heard noises coming from the apartment across the hall. She shook her head a little, wondering what kind of brutality and violence the rowdy crowd was up to at this fine hour on a Sunday.

She started down the steps from the apartment building and almost stepped on Andrea who was sitting in the stairwell, smoking a cigarette and looking out toward the parking lot. Andrea turned her face toward Michonne as she passed.

"Enjoying the scenery?" Michonne asked, not really knowing what else to say to the woman.

Andrea chuckled a little.

"Escaping the noise," she said. "Merle and Daryl are having a talk, and when Dixons talk it's best to get out of the way if you can."

Michonne stared at the blonde a moment.

"Are you hungry, by chance?" Michonne asked. Andrea looked at her, a half smile on her lips. She raised an eyebrow.

"I could eat," she said.

"Come on," Michonne said. "I'm going to pick lunch up at Lula's. I thought I might walk. It's a pretty nice day."

Andrea nodded and got to her feet, collecting up the lighter and pack of cigarettes that were on the step beside her. She started down the stairs after Michonne and fell in beside her when they hit the sidewalk.

"So what brings you to the beautiful Sweet Junction Estates?" Andrea asked, lighting another cigarette.

"Carol was just having a bit of a rough day, needed a little pep talk," Michonne said.

"And like the good friend you are, you came to give it to her, right?" Andrea asked.

"Something like that," Michonne said. "What are the Dixons talking about?"

Andrea sighed and looked at Michonne as they strolled slowly along. She took a drag off her cigarette before responding.

"They're talking about Carol," Andrea said.

"What about her?" Michonne asked.

Andrea chuckled.

"What are they not talking about?" She asked. "Merle is spewing his infinite brotherly advice to his brother. It's just that they don't know how to have any kind of conversation that doesn't involve yelling at one another and throwing the occasional punch."

"Do you know what really happened between Carol and that boy?" Michonne asked.

"I know everything, Michonne. I'm the regular Miss Cleo of Sweet Junction," Andrea said.

"Do I have to pay for the reading or will you give it to me free just this once?" Michonne asked.

"Well, since you're buying me lunch…" Andrea said. "I don't think they even know what happened. One minute we know that they're like bunnies locked up in that apartment, and the next Daryl's saying that she didn't want a Dixon in her life and that he doesn't give a damn about her anyway. Now they just aren't talking and Daryl is running around the house like some kind of spinner with his fuse lit."

Michonne chuckled.

"So he's doing a stellar job of just not caring?" Michonne asked.

"So you could say," Andrea said. "I asked him to buy groceries yesterday, which he didn't, and when I complained without thinking that there was one egg left in the carton this morning and I didn't know what to do with it, he took it out and smashed it on the counter."

Michonne laughed.

"Congratulations," Michonne said.

"On what?" Andrea asked.

"On your bouncing baby boy, of course," Michonne responded.

"I just wish I knew what set Carol off," Andrea said. "Daryl's not real good with using words to express…well…anything. It's just not a Dixon thing."

"His brother's just as bad?" Michonne asked. They stopped then, outside the window of Lula's. Andrea sat on the brick windowsill and Michonne leaned against it, watching as Andrea lit another of the cigarettes from the pack. She took a drag off it, observed her shoes for a second, and then swallowed before turning her attention back to Michonne and exhaling the smoke.

"Merle Dixon is a man of few words that make any sense at all. He talks all the time, but he hardly ever says a damn thing," Andrea said.

"But you stay with him?" Michonne asked, turning slightly to look at some of the people who passed by them on the sidewalk.

Andrea shrugged.

"He's a good man," she said. "Like I said, words just aren't a Dixon's thing."

"He's pretty rough around the edges though," Michonne said.

Andrea smiled.

"And so am I," she said. "You would be too…but everyone's life is different."

"So you think that Daryl really cares about Carol? Like genuinely cares about her?" Michonne asked.

Andrea nodded.

"I know he cares about her," Andrea said. "I don't know if he really knows he does or not, but I do. I think he cares about her enough that he hasn't got a clue what to do with those feelings. The Dixon men aren't the kind that write you poetry about their feelings. They're more like the kind of men that would bring you slaughtered animals and wait for you to pet them for the prize they found you. I think if Daryl thought it would help him feel better, and maybe get Carol to pet him again, she'd wake up tomorrow morning with a half-eaten squirrel or some shit like that outside her door."

Michonne laughed.

"Maybe not a squirrel," Michonne said, "but I think that Carol might respond to that sort of thing, if we could get her to understand exactly how to speak Dixon. I think that Daryl could be good for her, and from the sound of it, she could be good for him."

Andrea cocked her eyebrow at Michonne.

"Are you suggesting something?" She asked.

Michonne put her hand on the window and leaned for a moment. Andrea continued to watch her.

"I might be," Michonne said. "How well do you speak Dixon?" She asked.

Andrea smirked.

"I'm damn near fluent at this point," Andrea said.

"And I'm developing a pretty good grasp on Carolese myself," Michonne said.

Andrea smiled.

"So what are you saying?" She asked.

Michonne straightened up, smiling.

"Let me buy you lunch, she said, and we'll talk about it," she said.

She walked around and pushed open the door to the diner, leading Andrea inside and smiling to herself. She'd never really known Andrea very well, but she had a feeling that they were about to get to know each other much, much better.