AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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As Carol's words found their way inside Daryl's head, they seemed to take a sharp turn at his brain and nose dive directly down toward his stomach. They landed there, hard, and the vibration of them crashing into his gut echoed throughout his body in the form of a tension echoing out to all his extremities.

If it wasn't all a fantasy, then that left only two possibilities. Either it was nothing at all—which Daryl feared with that same icy cold fear with which he'd feared things as a child, back when he was too young to know how to pretend that he wasn't afraid—or it was real.

For the few seconds that Daryl allowed himself to contemplate such a possibility as everything he wanted suddenly, somehow, becoming reality, Daryl found himself enveloped in a warmth that wiped away the icy cold fear that had formed over imagining that Carol was seconds from telling him that she no longer wanted to play this game with him.

He realized, in those few seconds, that he wanted this—all of this—to be real more than he could remember wanting anything in his life.

He suddenly wanted it even more desperately than he'd wanted it before.

When Daryl turned to look at Carol, though, it was all wiped aside for the time being. Taking her appearance in, the one thing that he wanted was for her to be OK. She looked as though all the blood in her body had been drained out—suddenly and without him seeing what had harmed her. Daryl even quickly cast a panicked glance toward the ground to see if something had attacked her that he'd somehow missed and she was slowly bleeding out or succumbing to some fast-acting venom.

He noticed, in addition to the death-like palor, that she was shaking almost violently as she stood there, staring at him with eyes that were wide and clearly full of fear.

Daryl's first instinct was to move toward her, hand out, to catch the bow that she was holding. She let go of it as he wrapped his fingers around it and he tossed it gently to the side so that it landed in the blanket of leaves that covered the ground. She looked like she might very well go down, and he wanted to start clearing any possible hazards that would harm her if she were to suddenly drop from the rapid relocation of her blood.

Cleared of the hazard of a bow that might injure her if she fell forward on it, Daryl reached his arms out and caught her under her arms.

"Hey," he said, finding his words. When he heard his own voice, it sounded distant and foreign. It made him imagine that days had passed since either of them had spoken and he'd tried to process meaning out of the sound of human speech. "Hey—you alright? You OK?"

Carol looked at him. Her eyes were still wide.

Her eyes were big and blue. Daryl had heard people suggest that you could get lost in someone's eyes. Hers were the first that he'd ever really considered getting lost in. When she smiled, her smile went all the way to her eyes. Everything was in her eyes.

Daryl didn't like what he saw in her eyes at the moment. The fear had subsided a little, but it had been replaced with a definite dampening.

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"You wanna—sit down?" Daryl asked. "You need to sit down?"

She seemed to come into herself. A little of the color that had drained out of her face—leaving her pale and her lips almost ashy like death—started to return. Daryl felt when she curled her fingers around his arms and held to him while he held to her.

The tremors that were running from her body and into his began to calm a little.

"I don't need to sit down," Carol said. "I'm—I'm fine…"

"You said you weren't," Daryl said. "You don't look fine."

"I'm fine," Carol said. "I mean—I'm not sick, Daryl. But I do need to talk to you, and I'm not…I'm not looking forward to what…to what that might mean."

Suddenly it was Daryl that didn't feel well. He didn't let go of Carol, though, because he still didn't trust her body not to betray her. He thought it was probably best if she didn't go tumbling to the ground. He wasn't an expert on pregnant women by any means, but he had a gut feeling that throwing them around was probably something that it was better to avoid.

"Go ahead," Daryl said.

"Go ahead?" Carol asked. Daryl wasn't sure if it was sincerely a question or if she was simply repeating what he'd said, latching onto it as something to say that could stall what she needed to say for just a bit longer.

"Say what you got to say," Daryl said. "Same as before—ain't nobody gonna…nobody ain't gonna punish you for whatever the hell it is that you got to say. Even if…" Daryl stopped when his stomach clenched. He pushed through the discomfort and his own growing anxiety over the words he was preparing to hear. "Even if…it ain't what anybody wants to hear."

Carol frowned at him. The level of dampness in her eyes remained constant. He felt her fingers curl tighter into his arms where she held onto him, and it reminded him that he was still holding her.

She shook her head at him.

"I'm sorry," she said. Daryl closed his eyes to the impact of the words, but then he forced himself to look at her again so that she'd continue. She clearly needed to purge herself of whatever it was that was that was inside her at the moment, and he would allow her that so that she could have some peace—even if it stripped him of his own peace.

"It's OK," Daryl offered quietly. Carol continued to shake her head slowly from side to side.

"I thought I could do it," she said. "I thought I could—keep it up. For however long…forever, even. I thought it could just be a show and I could enjoy the parts that I enjoyed and…I could just keep it going. For whatever benefits it afforded anyone."

"You don't gotta apologize to me," Daryl said quickly.

His own anxiety began to boil inside him. He could feel it rising. He could see that Carol had found her steadiness as his own unsteadiness had grown. He dared to let go of her, then, and witnessed that she was safe on her feet. He wasn't sure, though, for just a second if she was safe in his arms. He would never hurt her—never. But that didn't mean that he trusted himself entirely not to even do something like blindly squeeze her arms as he gritted his teeth against the pain that he was sure was coming, and he knew his strength was greater than he sometimes imagined it to be.

The relationship, though it had been a fantasy, had given Daryl a few wonderful days. The few moments—when he wasn't fearing the end of it—that he'd allowed himself to feel like it was real? Those few moments had acted like a balm to his soul. Like salve on a burn, it had relieved some of the raw pain that he always felt inside him—a pain his brother had once tried to soothe with drugs and alcohol. A pain that, Daryl imagined, Andrea was soothing for Merle these days.

The feeling of those few sweet moments of relief had been wonderful, but Daryl knew the pain was coming back with a vengeance when Carol finally said the words and made it clear that it had all been little more than make believe—and even that was gone now.

But Daryl had never cared much for anticipation. He'd always preferred pain to come fast if it was coming.

"Don't tell me you're sorry," Daryl said. "Just tell me whatever the hell it is that you got to say."

"I can't keep pretending that I don't care," Carol said. "I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose—you. Your friendship. Anything. But I understand if you can't…if you don't want to." She stopped, clearly exasperated by the fact she was stumbling over her words, and tried to steady herself. Daryl's mind tried to make sense of what she was saying while also dealing with the sound of his own inner voice screaming at him that everything was coming in scrambled and indecipherable. "If it means that—you need to move or I need to move and we tell them…you can blame it on me. You can blame the whole thing on me. Just tell me what you want me to say and I'll go along with it…"

Daryl heard Carol talking. He watched her mouth moving. He heard the words tumbling out. They entered his ears and swam around in his mind. Somewhere along the way, though, he stopped making sense of what she was saying. Somehow, it started to sound like she was speaking a language that he'd never heard before.

Slowly, he picked and chose words to latch onto. They echoed over and over again in his brain. He began to drown out most of what he heard beyond the roar of his own blood in his ears.

"I can't keep pretending that I don't care."

The one line echoed over and over again in Daryl's mind. He latched onto it entirely. His mind repeated it back to him in an unending loop.

Had he possibly heard her correctly?

He stopped listening to the rest of her stumbling words—words that he wasn't sure were even doing her any good—and focused on those eight words.

"Stop," he finally said, his voice coming out in hoarse and desperate bark. "Stop!"

Carol did stop. She stopped abruptly and stared at him with her brow furrowed and her mouth slightly open. He felt a rush of relief at the silence that followed, ridding the air of the stumbling words she'd been spitting at him. He held his hands up in her direction to try to calm her from whatever feelings she might be dealing with at the moment.

"I got a question," Daryl said. "All I want you to say is—I just want you to say a yes or a no. Not—not nothin' else. Just a yes or a no. Can you—can you just…do that?"

"Daryl…I…" Carol started. Daryl raised his finger up, instead of his hands. Carol stopped speaking. She watched his finger like he might give her directions with it. "Yes," Carol offered, the word coming out much softer than the others.

"Good," Daryl said. "But that weren't my question."

"What…?" He raised his finger again and she stopped. She almost looked annoyed and her expression relieved Daryl's anxiety a little by sending a quick burst of amusement bubbling up inside of him. He liked the face she made when she was annoyed, but not really annoyed. He stored that piece of knowledge where he felt like he kept every useless bit of knowledge about Carol that he'd been collecting since he first knew her at the rock quarry.

"Did you say that—did I hear you right that you said—that you can't keep pretendin' that you don't care?" Daryl asked.

"Daryl…I…" Carol started. Again, though, the raising of Daryl's finger as a reminder of his request stopped her abruptly. She watched his hand. Suddenly, his stomach twisted slightly in concern when his mind suggested to him that, perhaps, Ed had trained her to respond to certain gestures.

Ed's punishment for disobedience, however, would be far greater than a simply display of irritation that Daryl might give her.

Daryl decided to ask her about it later, and he dropped his hand just in case she was responding to his signal out of some hard-learned obedience.

"Yes," Carol said.

"You care?" Daryl asked.

Carol nodded her head.

"Yes," she said, holding his eyes with her own this time instead of watching his hands.

"About me?" Daryl asked.

A very slight hint of a smile curled up the corners of her mouth.

"Yes," she said.

"Like that?" Daryl asked. "Like—like what we was pretendin'?"

"Yes," Carol said, seeming to back a away just a little from her own confession—or maybe she was backing away from Daryl.

"You want it—you sayin' that you'd like it to…you want it to stop entirely?" Daryl asked. He knew—he felt—that wasn't what she wanted at all. His gut, however, demanded that he make her say it in a way that erased all doubt.

"No," Carol said.

"You want it—to be real?" Daryl asked.

"Yes," Carol said.

Daryl felt a little lightheaded. For just a moment, something sparkled in front of his vision. It was the most amazing feeling possible, though.

He heard the laugh that escaped him, though he hadn't been entirely aware that was how his body would react.

He stepped forward and touched her face. He ran his fingers over her cheek and she leaned her face into his hand. She looked at him and his heart thumped harder in his chest. The fear was gone. The sadness was gone. Her big, blue eyes were smiling at him.

"Daryl…" she said softly, "am I allowed to…say anything besides yes or no?"

Daryl laughed to himself. He flexed his fingers again to feel the softness of her face and then he let them trail around to the back of her neck to hold her there. She stiffened for a fraction of a second—perhaps a reaction to having someone's hand so close to her throat—and then she relaxed.

"You can say whatever the hell you want," Daryl said. "As long as you don't take back none of what the hell you done said."

She smiled softly.

"You still haven't told me how you feel or—what you think," Carol said.

Daryl looked at her lips. Their color was back. The ashen paleness of before was gone. She looked healthy again. She looked radiant, really. More beautiful than he'd ever seen her.

"Not real good with words," he offered.

So, instead of saying what he was sure he'd stumble over even more than she'd stumbled over the chain of words she'd spat at him earlier, Daryl said what he had to say by bringing his lips to hers.

This time, it wasn't practice—and he kissed her exactly the way he wanted. Exactly the way he dreamed of kissing her if he ever knew she really wanted such a thing.