B, Yazzy x, Mamasan, RhiannonMuir, Ivy, jlcummins, HaloHunter89, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, hillaryn, HermioneandMarcus, Jasmin Jade xx, DarkAngelShadow, and itsi3 - thanks for the love.

Ivy- Thanks so much, I can't tell you how flattered I am. I would defiantly encourage you to go for it. I've been reading and writing fan fiction since 2004 and this is the first story I've ever felt like I wanted to share. I gotta tell you, it's been so fun. Working on the story and hearing everyone's responses is always the highlight of my day.

Folks, I am so sorry for bein' gone for so long. I have had a very hectic month. Thanks for hanging in there.

Disclaimer - I own nothing, except the original plot lines, dialog, characters and stuff...

Chapter 19 - Carol

I came-to in the bed of a truck. I was lying on my back with my head on Daryl's lap. He was stroking my hair and talking, but not to me.

I kept my eyes closed and tried not to wince every time we hit a bump in the road. The pain would erupt where my stitches had torn open, and my ribs were cracked, and my bruises were swelling - So basically, everywhere. I focused on the conversation as an alternative to the pain.

"So, what now?" he asked.

"Why don't you tell me about the girl?" said a voice I didn't recognize. It was a woman's, husky and full of bite.

"The girl is none of your damn business," snapped Daryl.

"Listen, I saved your life, you save my life and blondie over there saved Daniel's life, so now we're in a weird limbo where we all owe each other but not enough to trust each other. I'm not asking for the location of your secret hideout or whatever, I just want to know why you chased that girl down, slugged her, and tried to carry her off like a god damn cave-man. You have a good explanation for that, great, I'd love to hear it, if not we are gonna end up right where we started, with me pointing my gun at you head."

I heard Daryl chuckle. "So what? You're just looking out for the girl's best interests? Some girl who you don't know from a hole in the wall?"

"Us girls gotta stick together," she said in a sultry voice laced with venom. "My conscience wont let me sit by while some little girl is brutalized. The end of the world has made monsters of people and I'm not talking about the roamers."

"Roamer? Is that what you call them?"

"Yes," said the woman in the flat tone. "Now answer my question."

I could feel Daryl stiffen underneath me. He was gonna be stubborn about this. He always was. Didn't feel he needed to explain himself to anyone, or, maybe he was just keeping his promise to me to keep our friendship a secret.

"Daryl, just fucking tell her," I heard Andrea's voice coming through the window to the cab. She must be the one driving.

I heard Daryl scratch his head. I felt so detached. I realized I didn't care what his answer was. I was done caring, about myself, about others, what they knew or didn't know, about everything. I was done, empty, a husk.

"Her father died earlier today, turned into a geek and attacked her and her sister. They barely escaped with their lives. Apparently, she took it real hard 'cause she just left, took off. I think she was attempting suicide by geek. I knocked her out because she was fighting me and I wouldn't leave her. So, I only saw two options, what I did, or we both died."

Was that the story he was telling people?

"Who is the girl to you?" asked the woman.

Daryl was silent. Apparently he decided she was back to asking questions that weren't none of her business.

"She's a member of our group," called out Andrea from the drivers seat. "We look out for our own.

"Sound's like a good group to be part of," said the woman thoughtfully.

"Well, you two seem like good people yourselves, sticking your necks out for a girl you don't know who seems like she's in trouble," boomed Andrea's voice through the window to the cab. "We're headed back to our people if you'd like to join us."

"What do you think Daniel?" yelled the woman.

"Y'all got food 'cause haven't eaten in days," boomed a man's voice that was somehow melodic.

I heard Andrea laughing, "yeah, we got food."

I felt Daryl tense below me again. He didn't seem happy about Andrea extending an invitation to strangers but he wasn't fighting it. He just kept quiet and stroked my hair.

When the truck turned off the road and onto a dirt path I knew we were almost home but all I cared about was the excruciating pain of every bump.

My eyes bulged open and my jaw clenched tight against the pain.

Daryl was there in my line of sight.

"Hey. Welcome back."

His words brought me right back to Hershel. Lying in that stupid bed in that stupid room while he told me how he patched me together like Frankenstien's monster, all the while Daryl was standing in the hallway listening. I knew he was there, hearing Hershel describe in excruciating detail how broken and used up I was. I had finally learned to hear him coming and I wished to god I hadn't. I would give anything not to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Daryl knew just how revolting I really was... but he did.

I felt that last tether snap and I floated away from reality. I felt my eyes glazed over and no longer saw him but stared through him.

"Carol? Carol?" his voice was a whisper, desperate and urgent.

"So this is home sweet home?" asked the woman.

"Looks so... quaint," sang Daniel's voice with a chuckle.

"Stay with Andrea, I'm sure Rick will want to talk to you when he gets back," said Daryl as he slipped his arms under my shoulders and knees to lift me up."

"Gets back?" asked Andrea. "They were only going into town."

"Jeep's not back yet," said Daryl in gruff voice.

"Here, let me take her so that you don't jostle her when you jump down," said Daniel.

I felt strong, gentle hands take me. He cradled me against him and I noticed he smelled like warmth and sweetness. I was shocked that it didn't freak me out to be touched by someone other than Daryl. Maybe I really was dead inside.

I heard Daryl jump down and felt him take me back up into familiar arms. It had been so different this morning when he carried me back to the his little camp on the outskirts of the farm. I couldn't believe this was all the same day. This morning seemed like a life time ago.

I wished he would carry me back to his camp - I was always a better version of myself with him, in the woods, away from the others - but he didn't. He carried me back into the house, back into that stupid room and placed me on that stupid bed.

"I'll be right back, I promise."

As he left he picked something up off the floor but I just stared at the wall keeping a silent vigil for my own soul.

The shadow of the window pane made a blurry cross on the wall and I watched it rise as the sun sank. When the cross was nearly to the ceiling, elongated and asymmetrical a cleaned up Daryl returned cradling Sophie against his side with his right arm and balancing a shallow bowl in his free hand.

He placed the bowl on the table next to the bed and Sophia on the bed right next to me.

She didn't acknowledge me, she just stared off into her own distance.

I didn't speak or even turn my head. It hurt too much to see her, broken, empty, beaten and betrayed. Everything I had sacrificed, all those years of never fighting back, all to save her from this fate, from that look in her eye that said she knew just how ugly this world was. You carry that ugliness with you for the rest of your days, it never goes away. Now here we were, two ugly sisters.

The resentment began to rise like bile. I blamed her. If it hadn't been for her I would have left when I was 13, fended for myself, died rather than stayed there. I would have fought every time, never given in, forced him to beat me unconscious before I stopped fighting.

I wanted to scream but I didn't. I wanted to get up and walk to the other side of the room, turn my back to her but I didn't. Dead people don't get up and walk around, at least not real ones. I was determined to get being dead right. I had failed at being a sister, a daughter and a friend. I would at least be good at being dead.

I didn't want her next to me. Her arm touching mine made my skin crawl. It was too tactile a reminder of my failure. Too real. Too warm. Too soft. Too alive.

Flashes from stables hit me like a barrage of bullets. I fought the instinct to flinch. Dead people don't flinch.

Daryl pulled up a chair next to me and I heard water dripping. His hand took mine and he lifted up my whole arm. I felt a cold wet cloth press against my bicep and slowly slide down my arm. Then more water dripping. He picked up my other hand and I felt the cold wetness press against my other bicep. He was cleaning me. I felt him wipe the grime and the gore and the dirt of the road from my arms and hand and neck and face.

It was befitting, I thought, like some sort of ritual washing of the dead. I wondered if they would bury me next to Otis and Hershel's geek family. Seemed like a lot of work. Daryl should have never come after me and dragged me back here. Folks got a right to chose their own time to go. I was already dead, that was just how I planned to dispose of my body.

He had no right. I chose to go. I did. It was my choice, not his. My body, not his. Not his. Not his.

Again the scenes from the stable replayed in my mind making my head spin like I'd just been back handed.

Fear. Shame. Anger. Resentment. Too much. Too many feelings.

Daryl lifted his hands off me and held them, frozen above me for a moment. I felt his eyes on me and then he pulled his hands away.

This is why it's good to be dead. The dead don't feel anything.

I heard Daryl clear his throat and then crack something open.

"Now where were we? Right, the little girl just saved the dumb-ass scarecrow and now she's gone to sleep and he is watching over her."

My book he was reading me this morning, he went and got it. God, could it really have just been this morning? Hard to believe this morning I was alive.

Daryl read for a long time. The pane's shadow cross faded with the sun and it was full dark when car doors slammed followed by voices outside. Daryl got up, walked to the window and looked outside.

"It's just King Shane and Skeletor. She snuck off to go find Rick like a dumb-ass and looks like she got a bit knocked up. I notice she didn't come back with the car she left in. You know when I left to go clean up she came to my camp and told me the she needed me to run into town real quick and bring Herschel and Rick back. Like it's so easy to just go off the farm, like going into town isn't a potential death sentence. Like I'm at her beck-and-fucking-call. Mind you she didn't even care about Glenn or that I'd just come back from finding you. Damn woman never gets her hands dirty, I told her if she wanted them to go get them herself. Looks like King Shane went after her and dragged her ass back.

"Seems to be a running theme around here," he said returning to his seat. "You, Herschel, Skeletor, I don't know why y'all are in such a rush to leave this here farm and lose us some cars. This place is safe, quite, plenty of food. Them cars weren't bad neither."

He was quiet before giving me a side long glance, "you know you gotta snap out of this catatonic shit 'cause if'n you don' I'ma go wacko beat someone to death."

He laughed mirthlessly, "probably Shane."

He lowed his head to scrutinize the floor.

"Don't do this," he said in a small voice. "I already lost Merle -"

He bit down on his words, to sentimental, to emotional for Daryl Dixon.

"You've earned your place... in THIS world. What you survived. Takin' out that monster -"

He was silent again for a lingering moment.

"I know I failed you, both of you, and Merle too, failed everyone that ever mattered to me but... I just want my friend back."

He looked up then and I felt his eyes on me, waiting. When I didn't move or speak he picked up my old book again.

I was surprised. I expected anger, his usual response to anything emotional. I expected him to say that we weren't his problem, that we weren't no kin to him and if I had just kept my eye on Sophie none of this would have happened.

"Right, so back to the story," drawled Daryl. "They just fell asleep in the field of poppies and the scarecrow and the tin guy were..."

I hadn't realized I'd fallen asleep 'til I woke up. Daryl was asleep in the chair next to my bed, the book he'd read me all night spread open and in a state of half falling off his knee. Sophia was curled up in a ball at my side.

I noticed the pane's cross had retuned but it was on the other wall across from the side window. Outside I heard car doors slamming and more voices than there had been last night.

Daryl was at the window before I even realized he was awake.

"I'll be right back," he said and swept out of the room.

I kept my eyes on the cross. Mesmerized by the four burningly bright squares of light that carved out the cross of shadow. They were so bright that they hurt my eyes to look at but I welcomed the pain.

I was reminded of how pathetic I felt hiding in my own shadow away from the sun. Now I was so low a creature that even just the play of light on a wall burned my eyes.

The day time was no time for the dead.

I opened my eyes and the cross had moved to the floor just under the second window. Must be about noon.

I felt a warm weight beside me. Sophia. She hadn't moved. I didn't look to see if she was awake.

There were voices again, muffled but upset. I couldn't distinguish what any of them were saying. I heard foot steps approach the front door, and myself by default. Then, one voice rose above the rest, Hershel's.

"Let's get one thing clear, this is my farm. I wanted you gone. Rick convinced me otherwise but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So, why don't you do us both a favor and keep your mouth shut?"

Oh shit, Hershel just made a chump out of somebody. I wonder who just got publicly dressed down by the old man?

I sighed.

The dead don't wonder I reminded myself.

After a little Daryl came in with some food and put it on the table next to me. I kept my eyes on the cross.

He sat down in his chair and rubbed his face with his hands.

"Sophia hasn't said a word since she came out of those stables, except to say that you were in there and later that you had taken off. You're important enough to her to claw herself out of whatever abyss she's fallen into long enough to let someone know you need help before slipping back in."

He sounded tired and he was quiet for a long time.

"I get it. You believe the whole strength in numbers thing. Ed was dead, you figured Sophia was as safe as she was ever gonna be in this world, and you would go kill yourself.

"Well, you're wrong.

"She isn't safe, not from the demons in her own head. You're the only one who can help her dig out of this hole.

"Think about that."

He stood up slowly like he was aching and tired before retreating to the door.

"Rick, Glenn and Hershel got attacked while they were in town. One of their attackers got hurt trying to get away, was abandoned by his people and Rick made the call to bring him back here."

I could see Daryl shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

"I told you Rick was that good sort of person who could get us killed. His mercy has put us all in a pretty tough spot."

He sighed, leaning against the door frame.

"Anyway, Hershel patched him up and he's been unconscious all day. Some pretty heavy decisions gonna have to be made when he does wake up, I tell you what."

I kept my eyes on the shadow cross. I wasn't sure why he insisted on updating me. The dead don't need to stay up on the latest developments.

"Try to eat something," he said his hand patting the door frame before he slipped out. "Even the dead eat."

I felt my mouth twitch where a smile should be.

Man had a point.