AN: Here we go, a little more to the story.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Carol's lungs felt like they couldn't keep up with her. She'd never smoked in her life, beyond those three or four cigarettes she might have tried here and there with a friend, but she was feeling like a pack a day smoker by the time she started to recognize the area of the woods around her and knew that she was nearing the shed where they'd left Sophia.
She didn't dare slow down because she knew that her legs were shaking too. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs were just the one thing that drew the most attention. Her whole body was reacting, whether she liked it or not, to the intensity of the situation that she'd been through.
She'd been lucky in that she'd not encountered, on her way to the shed, one single Walker that wanted anything to do with her, and she'd not seen any living people since she'd left Terminus. Her gun was out of bullets at this point and she carried it with her, hopeful that somewhere there was more ammunition for it, but realistically knowing that at the moment it only served as a club or, at the very least, something for intimidation.
The shed they'd chosen was off a small road, easy enough for them to find but not likely to catch the attention of anyone else. It had probably once had a house or some other structure nearby, but now it stood alone. There were rusted out holes in the top of it, but the structure was sound and the doors were metal and hard to slide for their years of rust—that's why they had chosen it. The doors, although inconvenient to people because they required more effort than usual, were perfect against Walkers. It was too great an obstacle.
Huddled around those very same doors, as Carol neared the building, were three Walkers. They were, at the moment, proving the theory that she and Merle had about the monsters not being able to pull the doors along their rusted tracks.
Tired, Carol dropped the gun where she was standing. She reached for her knife, but on a second thought reached behind her and drew the sword out of its sheath.
Immediately it was heavy and awkward. Immediately she knew that it wasn't the prized weapon that she wanted it to be. In her hands? It felt foreign and strange and dangerous—as dangerous to her as maybe the Walkers.
She dropped it right beside the gun, stepped forward with her knife as originally planned, and growled at the Walkers to get their attention.
Apparently enough of the Walker paste was still on her that they didn't recognize her as human. They recognized her growl as merely the growl of another one of them. They looked right through her, never seeing her.
So she marched forward and dropped the first one of them without any show at all. The second seemed to have its curiosity piqued a little just before it fell, and the third had only started to reach a hand toward her before it joined the others in a pile.
"Sophia?" Carol called through the small crack in the door, working her fingers into the space to start pushing the door with everything she had left. "Sophia? It's Mama…"
Carol was terrified, at first, by the silence that she heard. She threw everything she had into working the door back on its tracks, and she only bothered to inhale again when she heard Sopohia, soft spoken from her vow of silence, squeak out to her.
"Mama?"
"Yes baby," Carol declared. "I'm back…I'm back—and we're going to meet everyone else."
Even in the darkness of the little building, lit only by the light that streamed in through rusted holes in the roof and the little bit of light that came in through the partially opened door, Carol knew Sophia perfectly the moment her small arms wrapped around her.
And for just a moment? Nothing else mattered. So Carol didn't rush the hug. Then, when she felt she could, she pushed Sophia out into the light and used Sophia's own shirt to mop at her face.
"I'm sorry—I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Carol declared, realizing her daughter looked like she was painted just from the muck she'd picked up in the hug.
"You're OK!" Sophia declared, almost in tears.
"Of course I am," Carol said, not wanting to let her daughter know how terrified she'd been. It was better if Sophia didn't know about those things—she'd been afraid enough in her life. There was no need for fear carried over of something passed. "I told you I was coming back for you, didn't I? I'm back."
Carol looked Sophia over quickly, satisfied that her daughter had suffered no minor or major injury during the course of the day, and then she turned back to retrieve the weapons she'd dropped on the ground.
"Grab your bag, Sophia," Carol said.
"Where's Merle?" Sophia asked.
"He's waiting with the others. We're going to meet them all," Carol said. "Get your bag, sweetie. Let's go."
Sophia ducked inside to grab the small sack that she carried with her, loaded with her belongings. The rest of them had left everything in the house that they'd return to tonight, but at the last minute Merle had suggested that Sophia take her things.
He'd thought that, if they never returned for her, Sophia might not be able to find the house—but at least she'd have her things if she had to go on.
Just the thought of it made Carol want to cry when she saw Sophia standing there, her backpack on her back. Because Carol had presented things a little differently—even while packing Sophia the food that she'd eat through the day—by simply saying it was like when they went on trips. She had to pack her things to be entertained.
Carol had never let Sophia believe that they might not come back.
"Why do you have Michonne's sword?" Sophia asked.
"Taking it back to her," Carol said. "Come on…"
Although still terrified of what they might find, or not find, when they reached the clearing that they'd agreed upon as a meeting place, Carol felt strangely more rejuvenated just having Sophia at her side. Sophia was actually smiling at her—pleased that she was back and they were going for the others. And Carol fed on that positivity.
She killed the few Walkers that dared to cross their paths, followed the signs that she and Merle had marked for her to find her way from the shed to the clearing, always checking behind her to make sure that no good citizen of Terminus was following them, and she walked slowly enough that she didn't require Sophia to run along behind her.
They could take their time. No doubt the others would take a little longer at any rate.
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
Daryl felt like he couldn't even think straight.
He should be happy they were all still alive. He should feel invigorated by the fact that they'd killed every asshole that had come at them.
He should feel thankful to his brother for showing up with his big head and loud mouth and breaking them out of the dark hell that they'd found themselves in.
He should even feel overwhelmed by the fact that, when they'd split them up and put them in different train cars—some kind of sorting bins maybe—he'd ended face to face with people that he'd never imagined seeing again…some he hadn't wanted to see again…and some that he'd never laid eyes on before.
He should feel happy that they were alive. They were alive and they were relatively unharmed, though he was pretty sure that he had at least a mild concussion thanks to the generous clubbings that the assholes they'd killed had been fond of handing out.
But what he really felt was panicky and sick to his stomach—and afraid.
"Where the hell are they?!" He bellowed at Merle, the only person that he had to yell at for the moment. "You fuckin' left them! Where the hell are they?!"
"Slow your roll there, lil' brother!" Merle yelled back, both of them entirely ignoring anyone in their surroundings. "I didn't leave 'em! At least not like you sayin' I did! They'll be on here in a minute! We went into the place together, but she had to double back. Make sure nobody didn't follow her to finish what we started with Soph—she gone the other way, but they comin' here…right around here…"
Daryl felt like his heart was ripping in half. He felt like he couldn't breathe. They'd ended up with a few extras out of some random ass train cars in Terminus—the only ones that had managed to follow them this far because they weren't taking the time to turn back and help the unknown people—and they'd lost Sophia and Carol. And Daryl, personally, wouldn't have even had to think a fraction of a second before trading out all those extras as a package deal for the faces he feared he wouldn't see again.
"Man, you left her! What if she ain't made it out?! We gotta go back—" Daryl stammered.
Suddenly he realized he was losing control of himself. He realized he was coming unraveled. He was breaking down in a way that he hadn't done in years.
And it was the kind of thing that Merle would give him hell about. It was the kind of thing that he had every right to give him hell about. And it was the kind of thing that Daryl didn't want others being witness to.
But none of that mattered right now because he couldn't have stopped it if he'd wanted to. It was beyond his control.
"We gotta…go back…" Daryl stammered out, not even trying to get under control the emotions that were going to come out whether he liked it or not. "We can't fuckin' leave her there!"
"Are you talking about going back down there? The place is on fire! We can't go back down there," Rick declared—one of the less than delightful people that Daryl had thought, temporarily, he might be destined to die alongside in a dark train car.
And without even thinking about it, Daryl swung around and responded to the man in the only way that his emotions would let him at the moment.
When his fist connected with Rick's jaw, he felt something crack—and he was pretty sure it wasn't his hand.
The only reason that he didn't go down on top of the man was because Merle pulled him back, nearly ripping his clothes off in the effort to put distance between them since he couldn't safely bear hug him from behind.
"Easy, Daryl!" Merle growled out.
Michonne stepped over a moment to check on Rick, not that others weren't already involved in that, and then she walked a few steps over toward where Daryl now stood, his chest heaving.
"We could go back to Terminus…" Michonne said. "If that's what you want to do? We'll go back…"
"Can't go back!" Merle barked. "Told her we'd meet her here. Said we wouldn't go back! We go back and she'll move on! Can't fuckin' go back!"
"Where are we going?"
When Daryl heard it, his heart stopped pumping blood. His breathing caught. His brain told his ears that their jokes weren't funny.
Because he didn't really believe that he was that lucky. He didn't really believe that, out of a situation so clearly terrible—so clearly dire—there could come so much good.
But when he turned his head toward the phantom sounds, a breathy and exhausted laugh following on the tail end of the words, and he saw Carol standing there—filthy, tired, her shoulders hanging, but alive— with Sophia just behind her wearing a grin that spread nearly from ear to ear, he nearly lost his mind.
Daryl broke free of the light hold that Merle had on him and he launched himself at Carol. As he neared her, his brain reminded him that she wouldn't be able to stop his momentum. She wouldn't be strong enough to catch him. If he went at her the way that he wanted, he would take them both to the ground. And, although it wouldn't bother him if he were catching her, he didn't want to land on top of her. So he stopped, just before he got to her, mindful of his steps, and then he reached his arms out to her to invite her to come the last step.
She did. She came and she wrapped her arms around him, muttering something about being filthy and about smelling terrible.
Daryl couldn't hear her, though. Not over the sounds of his heart pounding in his chest, as he realized that she was there, she was in his arms, and they were all very much alive.
And just as he'd been unable to stop the emotion that had rolled out of him before, he was unable to stop it now. But Carol, strangely enough, didn't seem to mind the string of declarations of his feelings that he rolled out to her, his face next to her ear, as he swung her around like she was nothing more than a rag doll.
In fact, she simply responded by holding tight to him and echoing his words until he decided that he was ready to let her feet rest, once more, on the hard ground beneath them.