DarkAngelShadow, felicia2235,DevilWithAnAngelHeart, Jasmin Jade xx, shadowhunter89, and itsi3 - thanks for the love ;)

Jasmin Jade xx - Yes, yes I do, but I am trying progress their relationship slowly. So, I really hope you stick with the story, because I got big plans! :)

itsi3 - I promise, chapter 17 I do finally get around to dropping Daryl's age, but as always you are very perceptive.

I own nothing except all the stuff that's original. ;)

Chapter 13 - Daryl

I woke up early, even for me.

You'd think I would sleep in a little since I had trouble getting to sleep last night. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I was excited.

I paced around my fire pit.

She was late.

I should move it into my tent before she gets here.

I strode over to the log I had leaned it against and grabbed it but didn't move toward my tent.

What if she thinks I'm trying something if I ask her to take a look in my tent. Thats weird. That's a weird thing to ask.

You are such a pussy, came my brother's voice echoing from the back of my cranium.

I rubbed my face in my hand, pulling hard at the skin in aggravation.

What the fuck am I doing? Why the fuck do I care?

I've never given a present before. Came a small voice from some quiet place inside me I rarely visited.

Shut the fuck up you piece of shit. It's not a present it's a supply. It's a tool that will make her more useful. That's all. It's practical.

Then why not tell her about it. Supply runs aren't a surprise, presents are a surprise.

Shut the fuck up.

I sighed. Not only was I arguing with my self, I fuckin' lost a god damn argument with myself. People rise from the dead and giving someone a... tool, that's what turns me into a bat shit crazy loon who argues with voices in his head.

I walked behind the nearest tree on the far side of my tent from the direction she always came from and leaned it against the trunk.

To put a stop to my pacing I began gathering supplies for teaching her to make traps. Hatchet. Branches and twigs. Rags. Rope. Parachute cord. Fishing line.

I heard her approach but I didn't pause what I was doing. Didn't want her to hear that I was still and think I was waiting for her.

When she got closer I knew something was wrong. She wasn't taking the quiet, purposeful steps my ears had trained themselves to tune into. I knew the sound of her walk like I knew the sound of her voice, maybe better - neither of us were big talkers.

These foot steps were staggering with frequent pauses.

I rolled my eyes. Must be a geek.

I grabbed my crossbow, cocked it, and stalked off in the direction of the stumbling freak.

When it was just out of sight I stopped and took aim through my scope. The thing was hideous, covered in blood, face torn up and swollen.

It stopped when it saw me. Some thing was wrong, it's eyes were blue.

"Please, just kill me."

Geeks don't whisper.

"Carol?"

I wanted to throw up but there wasn't time. Blue was replaced by white as Carol's eyes rolled up in her head and she became dead weight in air. I rushed forward to catch her.

There she was in my arms, unrecognizable to her only friend in the world. Her beautiful pale skin was now purple and black and red and yellow and brown. Every color it's not supposed to be. Her perfectly shaped lips and chiseled cheek bones where swollen and misshapen. Blood crusted over the tears where the skin broke open from the force of his hits. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes filling the whites of her eyes with an angry red I'd come to associated with the eyes of the turned. And there, on her neck five long thin purple marks, one on the left, four on the right, where his hand wrapped around her neck and squeezed.

Afraid to cause her anymore pain I grabbed her wrist to check her pulse but the same five bruises where there too. He was everywhere. All over her. Her body told a story written in a language I was well versed in.

This story was written yesterday, made of bruises a half-day old. Had the other's seen them?

Before the world ended I would have taken her to the hospital, no way the other's saw these. They would have made her go see Hershel and say were she got them. I could tell none of this had been treated.

Why hadn't she come to me?

Would you?

I shut my eyes against the memory of a belt turned whip, lashes so deep they needed stitches they would never get and a little boy dragging himself to his secret hiding place until the pain subsided enough for sleep to claim him. In the morning he would to clean himself up.

Never, not once, did I ever go to another living soul for help.

I slipped my arms under her knees and back and lifted her, cradled in my arms.

I laid her down next to my fire pit and pulled my sleeping bag out of my tent. I laid it out beside her and then lifted her gentle onto it.

Then I got to kindling the fire. Put a pot of water to boil over and then went digging around in my saddle bags for my first aid kit.

Kneeling beside her I grimaced. She would have more injuries then just what I could see. Cuts could get infected if they didn't get cleaned up, I knew.

I chewed on my nail and decided to start with what I could see. I cleaned my hands as best I could and found my cleanest rags to sanitize in the boiling water.

When they were ready I started cleaning her wounds with the rags. Gently dabbing at the blood crusted along torn ridges of flesh. When the dirt and grime and blood was nothing but a memory - a memory that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life - I got out the alcohol and the gauze and dabbed the wounds. Then, I took a q-tip and swiped the open wounds with antibiotic ointment and bandaged them.

Taking a deep breath I watched my shaking hand and willed it steady. I didn't have time for any of the useless feelings that were welling up inside me. I had work to do.

I pulled up her shirt to reveal her stomach and rib cage but stopped before her chest. More bruises. Looked like she took some shots to the stomach and side. I felt her ribs. Nothing broken but I wasn't good enough to tell if they were cracked. There were scratches, little cuts from rocks and brush were he must have thrown her when he-

I stopped my brain right there. That wasn't helping my hand stay steady.

I repeated the same process I had performed on her face and then gently rolled her over to take care of her back.

I rolled up her sleeves as far as they would go and examined her arms.

I couldn't stop myself, I looked at her knuckles and under her fingernails. She didn't fight back.

In the four months I'd known her this was the worst I'd ever seen it. Wasn't the worse I'd ever seen but in a world without doctors he was playing with her life. The beatings were getting worse. He was gonna kill her and then he would be free to start all over again with the little one.

God her stupid fucking pride, if she would just tell everyone then this could stop. There was no way the kid was that stupid. Sophia knew what was going on. Kids always know. So what was it. Why did she let this go on?

'Please, just kill me.'

Her only words to me after dragging her half dead ass all the way to my camp.

"Fuck you."

I spat at her limp form.

"Fuck you!"

I wanted to scream.

I hated her.

"Stupid bitch."

I shot to my feet and started pacing.

"After all the work I've put into you? You asked me to teach you! You said we were friends. I've spent months training you up, making you useful and how do you repay me? Please, just kill me? FUCK YOU!"

I felt something hot and wet on my face and swiped it away viciously.

"You owe me! You don't get to ask me anymore favors. You owe me a life and I demand yours. I demand that you live. You don't get to op-ed out like Jenner and Jacqui. The price that I am exacting from you IS your life. You have to keep living. That's your punishment for being so weak. To live in this world... with me."

I was nearly insane with rage at this point. I hated her. I hated him. I stared in the direction of camp. Took a few steps forward. Stopped. Took a few steps more. Stopped.

I could kill him. End this right fucking now. Slit his throat while he slept.

No, fuck that. He'd been torturing Carol for years. Why should he die quick?

I could wake him up, give him a knife, make him fight for his life. Toy with him a little. Make him think he has a chance and then cut him apart. Death by a thousand cuts. Well, maybe 500 cuts. And then, when the hope has gone out of his eyes and he knows he can't win. I'll start taking pieces from him.

I'll take his hands first. The hands he beat her with. I'll have to cauterize the wound so he doesn't bleed out. Then I'm going to take his weapon away, the one between his legs. I want the last things he sees on this earth to be his the bleeding stump where is dick used to be, before I cut out his eyes. His eyes that looked at his own daughter with lust and soaked up her pain with sadistic pleasure. The last thing I'm gonna take is his tongue, so he can never say another disgusting thing to her. Have to save the tough for last, though, it'd be too hard not to kill him. Major artery in the tongue. Even if he doesn't bleed out he could choke on all that blood.

When I'm done, I'm going to pray. For the first time in my life, I am going to pray that the mother fucker lives. I pray he lives a long, miserable, dickless life. That was both their punishments. I wished long life on them both.

I took another step forward and I heard her take a shuddering breath. I closed my eyes and hung my head. My whole body was tense, fighting. Fighting to give into the rage and keep taking steps forward until I was at Peletier's tent.

"Fuck!" I spat. Turning around slowly I took shaky steps back to the fire like I was fighting gale force winds.

Anger was the only instinct I had. Fighting was the only thing I knew how to do to survive. Staying, sitting, waiting. These were not things I ever did.

Reaching the fire I dropped next to her head and listened to her ragged breaths as I stared into the flames.

"Did you know that the ancient Chinese believed that if you save someone's life you were then responsible for them?"Her words after the first time I saved her.

Little book worm.

I hung my head, defeated. The tension leaked out of my muscles and took with it all the energy I had for hating others. Suddenly I was exhausted, and only had enough in me to hate myself.

I hated myself for letting this weak, pathetic little girl weasel her way into becoming my problem.

Hated myself for fighting it.

Hated myself for standing by and doing nothing to help her just because no one helped me. Because Merle felt that suckers help the weak and the only way to not be a sucker was to look out for number one.

"Did you know that the ancient Chinese believed that if you save someone's life you were then responsible for them?"

"Fine, you wanna be my responsibility little girl, you got it. From now on I call the shots."

Her only reply was to keep breathing. That was o.k. For now, that was all I asked.

I reached out my hand slowly toward her head but it froze of its own accord, trembling slightly as it hovered over her. Taking a deep breath, my hand sunk that final inch to rest gently on the top of her head.

Taking another breath I began stroking her hair. Long, slow, even stokes. I was real young when my mama died but I always carried with me the impression of her stroking my hair. I don't know if I was sick or scared or hurt, hell I don't even know if it's real. Maybe I just made it up cause I needed one memory, one gentle or kind thing done onto me by my kin.

Either way, it was the only comfort I knew how to give.

I was gonna sit here and pet her hair and listen to her breath until she wakes up.

Then I was gonna do some yelling.