AN: I apologize for the long wait—I had this chapter all ready to put up, but my computer died and I never got my files off of the hard drive, so I had to redo everything. That hiatus was much longer than I intended. Also, I am using the school excuse. I was so backed up on school work that I almost failed a subject (getting a C is failing in my book). Luckily, I got my grade back up to a B (thank Jesus for finals) and here I am! Again, I am so sorry, and I understand how angry the wait probably made you.

Really quick! Lucy is currently sixteen, correct? She has been for about nine months now, so she'll soon be seventeen, then eighteen . . . *hint hint* (I have no idea what I'm doing with this story). Don't worry! I have some ideas. And, Daryl is about 33—I am purposefully making him younger than he actually is in the show.

Onwards to glory—fasten your seatbelts—grab your popcorn—gather round, and do stuff and things!

Chapter 29

The snow crunched under his weight, mine as well. His hand kept me in place when he grabbed my wrist. I wanted to slap him, but at the same time I felt safe, like I could have stayed there forever. Everyone forgot how close Daryl and I were, especially my father. Or at the very least, how close we were before.

Daryl's face was the shade of a maraschino cherry, and he huffed loudly. "Lucy, listen to me," he hissed. I snatched my hand back.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" I demanded. "I don't like you, Daryl. I don't!"

"Lucy, I—"

I slapped his approaching arm. "No, you just wait. I am sixteen years old! Leave me alone. Jesus, leave me alone."

"Lucy, I care 'bout you," he insisted.

"You don't care about anybody but yourself," I argued. "You're an egotistic bastard."

He scoffed. "I'm the selfish one?"

"Did I stutter?" I retorted. "You're no better than Merle."

"You don't know my brother. Don't compare me to him."

I rolled my eyes. "And you did? You know, Merle would try to hook up with a sixteen year old, and I'm shocked that you would too."

Daryl's jaw jutted. "That's the problem," he said. His face relaxed, and he leaned up against a tree. "I forget you're only sixteen. You're just as mature as everyone else. No, you're better than them. You're the best of us. Sometimes, I forget how young you are. I forget that Rick's your dad. Half the time, I think you're my age. You don't take shit from no one. Not your ma, your pa. You're tough as nails. I care 'bout you."

The sight of Hershel's stunted leg did not faze me in the slightest, but it should have, right? I don't really get it anymore. I feel like I should be weeping like Beth and Maggie, or diligently working on saving our only moral supporter. And yet, I did nothing. I watched as blood soaked into the cloth around his stump, dying the entire pillowcase a dark, wet red. His leg hair matted together like my hair used to do whenever I went swimming in the summer. The entire limb was the shade of purple, blue veins pulsating vividly against the brittle skin encasing muscles and stringy tendons. Hershel's leg must have been as numb as my emotions were.

Dad said I would have to grow up, and I did. Only, I did not become someone I wanted to be. As soon as I stepped foot into the West Georgia Correctional Facility, I might as well of sold my dwindling soul to the devil. Was it the devil that forced me to remain calm around blood, despite knowing that someone I had grown fond of could die whenever?

A sixteen year old girl should be learning how to drive, worry about going to prom—something that would not even matter until I was a junior—fuss about makeup, hair, clothing, or whatever else. Me? I learned how to drive, however I could not give a care about anything else irrelevant to survival. I didn't care if my hair looked like I had just stuck a fork into an electrical socket. It didn't bother me that the seams of my clothing were coming out, or that I lost an unhealthy amount of weight each month. I didn't care if I looked like death; it was a small price to pay in exchange for being alive . . .

The chances of Hershel surviving were little to none. The key to that is surviving, which is the key to everything. Yet, I could not bring myself to shed a single tear for Hershel. Every man for himself. Wrong; had that been true from the start of the race, I would be dead already.

"Lucy," Carol called. I turned towards the woman. She ran a hand through her longer hair before continuing. "I need you to do me a favor," she said. "I already asked Glenn, and he agreed to help."

I nodded, following her out of Hershel's cell. I passed multiple group members, but I never raised an eye to them. I could feel their eyes boring into my back as they all stood around thinking the same thing: why didn't she care about Hershel? I pinched the bridge of my nose when we stepped outside. "What do you need?"

Her doe eyes brightened. "Lori's about to give birth any day," she said. "I know you two aren't on good terms, but . . . I need you to help me practice a C-section on a Walker."

I froze in place. Glenn was ahead of us. "You ready?" he asked. I sighed, and Carol nodded. We went down to the fences. Several Walkers slammed into the barricade, growling and wedging decaying fingers at us. Carol looked over them, squinting and contemplating. "That one," she said, pointing to a female Walker clad in a moldy yellow sundress.

Glenn rolled his shoulders, pulling out his bowie knife. "Everything you're saying is completely sane," he said with uncertainty. "You're wanting to use a Walker for practice is a sane thing. I mean it, okay? I'm just—I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it."

"Lori's overdue," Carol insisted. "She had Lucy and Carl by C-section. She's probably gonna have to have this one the same way. Hershel had a little bit of experience with this kind of thing, but he's not gonna be able to do it anymore. I need experience! And we have plenty of cadavers."

"All right, well, like I said, it's completely sane."

Carol examined the Walker as it snarled. "I need to learn how to cut the abdomen and the uterus without cutting the baby."

"Why not?"

Glenn stepped forward, raising his knife. Carol's hand snapped out like a viper, pulling him back. "I'll do it." She took the knife and slid closer to the fence. Glenn and I watched her as she slid the knife clean through the Walker's eyeball. It collapsed in a heap. Nodding towards Glenn, he rattled the knife against the fence, drawling the Walkers away. I followed Carol down. She untied the wire around the hole in the fence. "Are you sure about this?" I asked. She only nodded.

"Grab the arms," she ordered. "I got the legs."

I slipped out of the hole, grabbing the dead Walker. My hands sunk into her rotting flesh. My face wrinkled. Once Carol grabbed her legs, she started to walk backwards. I slipped on the grass, dropping the Walker. Carol stumbled forward, but caught herself on the fence. "Be careful," she demanded.

We set the Walker down on the gravel. I took the discarded wire and laced the fence back up. Carol stood over the corpse, twirling her knife in her hand. I approached her. "You have no idea what you're doing," I said. "How do you know if you mess up or not? The Walker isn't pregnant."

Carol looked at me. "We'll have to use what we have."

She crouched over the corpse. I lifted the sundress up over her body, leaving it in a clump on her gray chest. Her hips were prominent, and the skin across from the high bones looked like dirty curtains. Carol hesitated before making the first cut an inch away from her left hip. She cut slowly, glancing back at the Walker's face. Black blood dribbled down from the incision. A fly buzzed over, picking around at the cut. I slapped it away. Carol shifted.

"Put your hand here," she said, grabbing my wrist. She guided my hand over to the cut. "Pull this back—no, not there. Here. Take your other hand it at pull this."

I held the top and bottom lids open. The skin felt like dry paper. Carol shook out her fingers before taking the knife and slicing the Walker's bladder to make way for the uterus. The innards were black like the blood. "What now?" I asked. Carol didn't move.

"I guess we get the baby out," she said. "We can't dig around inside, or she'd die." Carol took her hands away, and ran over to the guard tower. She came back with a large round stone. "This is the baby. I'm gonna place it in first, move the organs around it, and get it back out. Hershel told me that after cutting open the skin, you have to cut the fascia and muscle layers too. After that . . ."

"Things get messy," I finished.

"Things get messy." Carol suddenly shuddered. "You don't need to see this. Go check on Hershel, 'kay?"

I hung my head, rubbing my face. "She won't recover from this," I said. "She'll die no matter what, won't she?" Carol frowned, and rubbed my arm.

"Go see Hershel."

But Hershel was fine. We almost lost him, but we didn't. Everything was going to be all right. I sat up in the guard tower that night, watching Walkers shuffle around below. I watched them through the scope of my rifle. Fifty yards away made them appear harmless—if only that were true. I thought of shooting them down. I wanted to blow their heads into nothing. More would come, and I could keep doing it. Of course, too many would show up, which only induces serious problems. My shoulders tensed when I raised my rifle, but I made them slacken and relax.

My finger twitched at the trigger. I licked my lips before biting down on them. Before I could fire, a voice stopped me.

"What're you doin'?" Daryl demanded. I turned around to face him. "They ain't hurtin'

anythin'."

I set the rifle down. "I know," I told him. "I know."

He walked towards me, placing his crossbow beside the rifle. He sat down on the edge of the tower, slapping the ground beside him. I joined at the ledge. "How're you doin'?" he asked me. I shrugged.

"My mom's gonna die," I sighed.

"Don't say that."

"I just did, Daryl," I snapped. "Do you realize how much blood she'll lose? How much pain she'll feel?" I rubbed my eyes. "She'll die, you and I both know it."

Daryl bit his lip. "That ain't true."

"Yeah, it is . . . Look, I'm sorry. I just don't really know what to talk to you about anymore. We've both been given so much more responsibilities, that socializing has been the least of my problems." He snickered at that. "What?"

"Nothin'," he insisted, watching the Walkers.

"'Nothin',' my ass." Daryl rubbed his knee.

I stared into his blue eyes. "You're really somethin', you know that?" he declared.

"So I've been told."

I pulled one of Daryl's arrows out of his holster, twirling it in my fingers. The green feathers danced in the air. "When you're dad dies—if he dies—you're the leader, you realize that, right?" I nodded. "You ain't doin' it alone."

"Are you asking to be the vice, Mr. Dixon?"

"S'pose I am." I laughed at that. "Don't think I can run a country?"

"I don't know," I said. "Hey, I have to ask you something, and I need an honest answer."

"What is it?"

I tucked my hair behind my ear, licking my lips nervously. "Do you still care about me?" His eyes widened. I placed his arrow down. "I mean, back in the winter, you said did. Was that true?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"That's what I said."

He looked at me. I saw innocence behind his eyes. An innocence that you would find in a lonely child. Daryl wasn't a child, and he wasn't lonely either. Or at least, he didn't seem like it. He never ran around complaining about being alone. "Yeah. It is."

My fingernails dug into my palms. "U-oh, okay," I stuttered. "I didn't think . . . Daryl, I'm sorry. I have to go." I left him there sitting. I knew what he was going to say, so why the hell did bother asking? Nothing had changed. Nothing ever changes. Daryl Dixon loved me—or at least claimed to. In all honesty, I was flattered. I had never been loved by someone with a penis that was not my dad or brother. But the idea of a man old enough to be my father love me made my insides hurt, and not it a good way. I was a chicken shit.

I never checked on Hershel. I curled up into a ball, lying on my bunk. I had skipped dinner to avoid Daryl, and my father assumed that I was just tired. I twirled a small pocket lighter in my hands, flicking the flame. Beth shimmied inside, sitting down on the bottom bunk. I heard her taking a few deep breaths. I dropped my lighter onto my pillow and hung over the edge of the bed, staring down at her. "You okay?" I asked.

A smile plastered across her face. "Daddy's gonna live," she said. "He almost died, but your mom saved him."

I cocked an eyebrow. "How?"

She sat up. "He passed out, and stopped breathing. Your mom gave him CPR." I hummed to myself, lying back down. Beth got to her feet, and poked me. I turned to face her. "Carl found this earlier." She handed me a heavy medical textbook. "I figured there's something in there about how to do a C-section."

"I thought this was a male prison," I pointed out. "Why would there be a book about how to give birth?"

Beth shook her head. "It's more than that. It's about all sorts of things."

"I realize that."

"So why'd you—"

"It doesn't matter."

She didn't say anything at first. "I didn't know if you wanted to look for anything. Maybe if you read about it, it'd make you feel better . . . I mean, like, if you knew what Lori was going to go through."

I sat up violently, so violently that Beth stepped back. "I'm perfectly fine," I snapped. I took the book, and slammed it at the wall. "A book isn't going to fix anything."

Beth frowned, clenching her fists. "Why don't you ever appreciate anything I do?" she hissed. "I'm sorry that you're so locked up inside that you've become this, this—"

"This what?"

"A bitch!"

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not a bitch," I insisted.

Beth crossed her arms. "Yes you are," she argued. "We used to be really close, and now you won't accept any type of human contact from anybody! You shut us all out, except Rick. Where were you when my dad was dying? Where were you when we needed you? You weren't there! You never were!"

She was screaming by now, and soon I was too. We shot insults at each other like we were playing Russian roulette. Everybody watched us fight. My father fought through the group and yanked me back so hard that he bruised my skin. He stopped me from lunging at Beth. "What the hell are you two doing?" he demanded. "Knock it off! Both of you. I've had enough of this group tearing each other apart." I yanked away from my father, glaring at him. I turned on my heel, grabbed Beth's things, and threw them at her.

"Get out," I spat angrily. "Get out, and leave me alone. All of you." Without another word, I slammed the cell door, and hung a blanket up over the door to gain more privacy. That night, sleep never came. The medical textbook sat upside down in the corner, page after page left bent after I tossed it. The book haunted me over in the corner.

I crawled out of bed, and lit the candle beside the bunk bed. I brought it over to the mini desk that was built onto the wall, and set up a collapsible metal chair I had found. I sat down, and placed the book onto the table. I opened up to the table of contents, and skimmed down until I found a section entitled Pregnancy & Procedures. I flipped to the section, and began reading through.

A Caesarean section (often C-section, also other spellings) is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen (laparotomy) and uterus (hysterectomy) to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus. A late-term abortion using Caesarean section procedures is termed a hysterectomy abortion and is very rarely performed. The first modern Caesarean section was performed by German gynecologist Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer in 1881.

A Caesarean section is often performed when a vaginal delivery would put the baby's or mother's life or health at risk. Many are also performed upon request.

I skipped further, reading about birth defects, and things that could possibly kill my mother if we weren't careful. In those who are low risk the risk of death for Caesarian sections is 13 per 100,000 and for vaginal birth 3.5 per 100,000 in the developed world. The UK National Health Service gives the risk of death for the mother as three times that of a vaginal birth.

As if I didn't know that.

There are several types of Caesarean section (CS). An important distinction lies in the type of incision (longitudinal or latitudinal) made on the uterus, apart from the incision on the skin.

The classical Caesarean section involves a midline longitudinal incision which allows a larger space to deliver the baby. However, it is rarely performed today, as it is more prone to complications. The lower uterine segment section is the procedure most commonly used today; it involves a transverse cut just above the edge of the bladder and results in less blood loss and is easier to repair. An unplanned Caesarean section is performed once labor has commenced due to unexpected labor complications. A crash/emergent/emergency Caesarean section is performed in an obstetric emergency, where complications of pregnancy onset suddenly during the process of labor, and swift action is required to prevent the deaths of mother, child(ren) or both. A planned caesarean (or elective/scheduled caesarean), arranged ahead of time, is most commonly arranged for medical reasons and ideally as close to the due date as possible. A Caesarean hysterectomy consists of a Caesarean section followed by the removal of the uterus. This may be done in cases of intractable bleeding or when the placenta cannot be separated from the uterus. Traditionally, other forms of Caesarean section have been used, such as extraperitoneal Caesarean section or Porro Caesarean section. A repeat Caesarean section is one that is done when a patient had a previous Caesarean section. Typically it is performed through the old scar.

My mother would be going through a repeat Caesarean section. I sighed to myself in relief, knowing that there would be some sort of guidelines there. After she gave birth, we would have to close the incision. We could stitch it, but that would risk an infection. I glanced back at my lighter—we could always cauterize the cut, right? The pain would be unbearable, and we had no way of preventing the pain. We didn't exactly have access to anesthetics. Even if we managed to get my mother to sleep, she would feel pain.

The first incision is made with a scalpel into the skin. The incision should not reach from the hip to the other hip. Way to go, Carol . . . Within minutes, the words began to blur and contort. I rubbed my eyes before passing out, collapsing onto the ground.

AN: All right. Now, Lucy and Daryl have a love/hate relationship. And now we all know why Daryl still likes Lucy! Yay. Anyways, I hope Daryl wasn't too OOC, and if he was, I am sincerely sorry. And just to be clear, I'm trying to avoid stereotypes and clichés, but I will say that Lucy doesn't really want to be in love with someone, because she really doesn't see the point in getting too close to someone (a little Cersei Lannister for you), although Daryl doesn't want to end up dying alone, especially without someone caring about him. I guess.

Lucy knows how to perform a C-section now.

So, pretty much, this is a story about battling feelings and relationships. Not exactly romance, but it's something. Normally, I'd be up for a serious love story, however I still consider ages to be a major conflict in stories.