Timeline/canon note: I really angsted about letting this blend back into canon at the end, but then there's no room for Carol and Daryl to relax and enjoy each other because five seconds after they get into the prison, Lori dies and Hershel loses a leg (I'm starting to understand why the show didn't let Carol and Daryl get together at this point. No freaking space for kissing scenes.) Anyway, so since we've already busted out of canon with Carol and Daryl getting together, let's leave this fic in happy non-canon land.

Carol was with Lori and she safely delivered the baby and fought off the walkers. Since she was such a good fighter, T-dog didn't have to fight for her. Hershel kept a sharper eye out for the ankle biters and got to keep his leg. And everyone lived happily ever after. In a prison. Because irony.

Epilogue Part I

Carol jiggled the baby in her arms, kissing the wispy little hairs atop Judith's head. But no matter how many times she paced the upper balcony of their cell block, the crying didn't abate. For the thousandth time, Carol felt a rush of gratitude for all the layers of metal between the baby and the walkers her cries would attract. There was something in that thought that struck at the heart of her, the way the newest life attracted death so loudly.

The stairs creaked as Hershel climbed up and Carol turned to him with a frown. "Are you sure she doesn't have an ear infection? She's so fussy today."

The old man held out his arms and she handed over the baby. Where were they going to find antibiotics suitable for an infant? But as soon as Judith settled into Hershel's arms, the cries softened to quiet murmurs, and the baby's eyelids started to droop.

Carol sighed. "I think Judith just likes men better. She'll always stop crying for Daryl before she'll stop for me."

"He was the first one to feed her." Hershel smiled. "Maybe she thinks he's her mother."

Carol snorted. "You'd better not say that where he can hear you." But as soon as the words passed her lips, her face fell. That wasn't particularly likely, these days.

Judith had been born only a few days after they found the prison. The walkers had broken into the courtyard and the group had all gotten split up in the chaos. Carol had fought through to get Lori and Carl into a boiler room just as Lori's labor had begun, and the stress sent the baby into distress. Carol had performed the C-section, all the while ignoring the sounds of moans and gunshots as Carl battled the walkers that inevitably found their hiding place. Thankfully, Lori had been fighting with her gun, not her knife, or they wouldn't have had a single clean instrument to perform the surgery.

It had been the single most terrifying experience of her life. Praying the entire time that the baby would make it, that she wouldn't screw up the surgery. That Daryl would find them.

Every one of her racing heartbeats had seemed to whisper his name until he appeared. A few minutes later and it would have been too late. The newborn baby's cries had attracted more walkers and Carol hadn't been able to improvise a bandage for Lori's incision before she had to leave baby and mother to fight alongside Carl. The whole hallway had filled with the walking dead and then whoomp Daryl's bolt had felled the walker she'd been wrestling. He and Rick came around that corner like a two-man army. Daryl had fought harder than she'd ever seen that day; shooting walkers with one hand and stabbing with the other. One shot, one stab, reload. One shot, one stab, reload.

Even after they'd gotten Lori safe back to Hershel's care, her milk wouldn't come in—too many months of starvation and stress. The baby had grown weaker while Lori kept trying and trying to feed it until Daryl threw down the bolt shaft he'd been whittling into oblivion. Said he was going on a run and fucked if he'd was waiting for rest or the light of morning.

Rick was half out of his mind with the need to provide for his baby and also be with his recovering wife. Carol had to shout straight into his face to get him to stay behind while she and Daryl went for formula.

That day care center had been a gift: from God or the devil, she hadn't been sure at first. Not until they'd clasped hands, bracing themselves without looking at each other, and gone inside to find it blessedly empty of tiny walkers.

She'd gathered armloads of diapers and formula, her nerves tickling when she'd realized she couldn't hear Daryl in the other room. She'd drawn her knife and gone searching, only to find him stock still and staring at a little purple construction paper hand that said "Sofie." She'd wrapped him in her arms from behind, laying her cheek on his shoulder, and told him, "You would have found Sophia. If her daddy had taught her to survive in the woods the way you've been teaching Carl, she would have lasted a few more days and you would have found her."

And then she just held him, comforting him even while inside, she kept reliving Lori's grunts of pain, the moans of the walkers. The blast of Carl's pistol and the boy's terrifying silence as he stood between them and danger, his feet planted and his pants riding up and exposing his ankles because he'd already outgrown the trousers she'd lengthened for him.

"Carol," Hershel murmured, and she blinked back into reality. "Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

She huffed out a breath that was half a snort, because what on earth did she have to complain about, compared to the others? And to complain now, when they had fences and beds and Lori had finally kicked the fever that they'd all feared meant she'd been contaminated with walker blood. "I'm—"

"Fussing so quietly that the baby had to cry for you," Hershel finished.

She glanced guiltily at Judith, now sleeping in his arms. But even that reminded her of the night in the daycare center with Daryl. That last night before things changed between them.

Hershel moved into his cell and she followed, dropping his privacy quilt behind them to muffle the sound.

In the daycare, she'd been holding Daryl so tightly that she sensed his voice more than heard it. Which was part of the reason she hadn't thought she'd heard him right.

"You ever want 'nother little girl?"

The pain in his voice had been so low, so sharp, that she'd forgotten for a second Sophia wasn't his.

She'd been almost as surprised to hear herself answer, "Yes."

But after she thought about it, she realized it was still true and she'd rubbed her thumb over his hard stomach, comforting both of them.

"If it was safe," she had said. "I mean, it might be too late for me. I haven't gone through the change yet, but it can't be too far off, and I've never carried babies well."

Then again, she'd never been pregnant in a place where her man's hands would care for her instead of pummeling her. Daryl would be so careful with her, if she carried his child. Hell, he always was, even though that might never happen. The thought had given her courage to turn him around so he was facing her, meeting his eyes when she said, "If it was with you, yes. I'd want more children."

Now, she sat down hard on Hershel's bunk, curling a little forward to ease the pain in her stomach. Because that moment had been the most intimate they'd ever shared, and she'd barely seen Daryl since.

"Are you not feeling well?" Hershel asked.

She stared at the floor, fighting the urge to gasp. There was plenty of air, she knew that. It just didn't feel like it.

"Daryl's pulling away again," she whispered. "I don't know why this time. I thought things were getting better, that he trusted me. I thought—"

She'd thought he was happy.

Her guts curdled with the thought of her own arrogance. How Ed would have laughed, at the thought that she could make a man happy.

She swallowed, glaring at the floor as she shook off the old thought. Not everything was her fault. And she hadn't done anything wrong. They hadn't even fought. She'd simply answered a question that Daryl had asked. Maybe it wasn't the answer he wanted. She could see him refusing to father a child he couldn't be absolutely certain he could keep safe, and she could also see him deciding to push her away so she could have that opportunity with another man, rather than telling her how he felt.

She sat up straighter. No matter what was bothering him, it wasn't her fault. Too bad that didn't narrow down the possibilities too much.

She looked to Hershel. "Do you know what might be wrong with him, this time? Because I'll be damned if I'll let him isolate himself from the group, but I'm lost. I don't know what happened and if I don't know what happened, I don't know how to help him."

The older man's lips twitched beneath his beard and his eyes were surprisingly warm for the topic. "I expect you don't need to worry too much about that boy," he said.

"Then where is he going off to all the time?" she pressed.

He slept on the perch, with a direct line of sight to the cell she still shared with Lori and Judith, despite her best efforts to urge Rick to take his place with his family. She knew when Daryl was off clearing cell blocks, because then the group was gone with him. She was doing it alongside him, whenever she wasn't with the baby. But when everyone else was resting, he'd disappear and come back sweaty and so bloody she was worried he was single-handedly trying to clear out the entire forest around them.

"Perhaps he just wanted a moment alone," Hershel suggested. "We've been living out of each other's pockets for months."

Carol gave him a look. "Two weeks of 'moments alone' that leave him exhausted and streaked in dirt and walker blood?"

The older man looked down at the baby in his arms.

"When I was younger," he said. "My wife started going out on Tuesday nights. Always said she was doing errands. But she never came home with any packages." He tucked the blanket tighter around Judith's face. "I was sober at the time, but I remembered all too well that stories that didn't match up with the details were usually just that: stories." Above his white beard, his eyes were sad when they met Carol's. "I lied to my wife more times than I could count. Perhaps part of me wished she'd lie back, just once, so I could feel I wasn't so far into the wrong. Maybe that's why I accused her of sneaking out on Tuesdays to see another man."

Carol picked at the bedding beneath them, wishing Hershel wouldn't always tell his stories so slowly because she wanted to go out in the yard, see if she could spot any sign of Daryl in the trees. "Hershel, I'm not worried Daryl's cheating on me. He's not the type, even if the Swedish bikini team were hiding out in this prison." She swallowed a sigh.

Even after they'd found the safety of the walls of the prison, they hadn't gotten beyond a little making out in quiet hallways before one or the other members of the group would interrupt them. Her hand rubbed over the spot on her belly where Daryl's hand had crept under her shirt, just once.

"Well, as it turned out, neither was my wife. She had joined a knitting circle."

Carol frowned, tucking Judith's bare foot back into her blanket. "Your wife lied to you about knitting?"

"She was afraid I'd object to the expense of the yarn." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "My drinking years did a great deal of damage to our marriage. Especially to the trust we'd once had between us, when we first married."

She scratched at a dark spot on her pants, frowning. "It's not about not trusting him. He does this, pulls away. When he's afraid to let people close or when he thinks they don't want him."

"He does," Hershel agreed. "But sometimes, it's best to have faith and simply ask before you assume the worst. It might be that he just decided to take up knitting."

She had to smile at that, in spite of her dark mood. "Maybe."

She remembered the look in Daryl's eyes when she told him she'd want more children, if they were his. Awe, and fear. And hunger. She knew that moment had been every bit as important to him as it had been to her.

Maybe Hershel was right. Despite whatever secrets Daryl was keeping, they were building a home here. They had safety, and food, and family. They were deciding what the world would be now, and part of that was learning to plan for the worst, but expect the best.

She would just have to be patient, until he was ready to share his secret with her.

Author's Note: Don't worry about that cliffhanger, friends. We have not one, not two, but THREE chapters of epilogue, because I'm ridiculous, and Marie1063 is an enabler, and also because the smut ran too long so I had to break it up. Somehow, I didn't think I'd get any complaints on that one.