All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put their hearts back together again...Caryl AU. He's a single father with just one concern and a past he'd rather leave behind him. She's a single mother just looking for a new start and an escape from her own past. Everyone knows life is not a fairy tale. Caryl, Mandrea Rated M for sexual content, violence, language, etc.

"Daryl?" Her fingers reached thoughtlessly for the rounded firmness of his shoulder before she remembered and snatched them away. It wasn't like it used to be, and some cruel part of her wondered if it had ever really been anything at all. Still, he found her. He always did. Caryl, set two years after the events of 4.08.

"Carol stared at the wall. She was lying on her side in an unfamiliar bed—a stranger's bed, abandoned until she'd taken it up the night before. It rested in an abandoned room. An abandoned house. A nameless town." When the group spends the winter in Daryl's hometown, Carol finds herself joining him in a dangerous journey through his past.