AN #1: Ouch. That last episode? Owie owie owie. Let's ignore the pain together.

Disclaimer: I do not own or write for TWD or AMC.

OoO

He woke before dawn, his internal clock telling him he needed to be up.

Carol's hand was in his, her other arm around Judith. There was an empty bottle on the nightstand, which meant she had gotten up in the night, and he hadn't even stirred.

His heart hammered. They were both asleep, and her hand felt cool and soft in his own, if a little callused. Her hair had dried in soft curls around her face.

Her face was relaxed, peaceful. She smiled softly.

He felt strange, looking at her, invading her privacy by staring at her while she slept.

But she was so beautiful, so perfect, he couldn't make himself look away.

And then the memories of the night before surfaced, all at once, and he felt his stomach muscles all contract in shame.

Weak. Useless. Disgusting.

She didn't deserve him.

He withdrew his hand softly, watching her face as he did. He held his breath as she grimaced and lines formed on her brow, but that seemed to be the extent of her disturbance.

Now he had to roll off the bed.

He had to get away. Maybe he could go out and hunt, or something. Go out by the tall privacy fence and take out any walkers he could.

He knew they would want to leave today. Beth would want to find Maggie and Glenn. Tyreese would want to go looking for his sister.

He didn't really want to go. He could protect them here. There was water, the fence was strong. There weren't going to be any more Governors coming their way with a tank, he hoped.

It depended on who won that fist fight.

And then there was Rick and Carl. They had their baby. They probably didn't know, probably thought she was dead, just like he had thought.

He sighed. Breathed deep. Rolled off the bed in one fluid motion, landing soundlessly on the wood floors.

He knew how to get out of bed, how to leave a room, without sound.

He left the room, closed the door. Went to go walk down the dark hallway to the living room, then thought better and peeked into the master bedroom.

Two blonde little heads peeked out from the pillows, both sleeping.

He sighed to himself and closed the door.

Tyreese and Beth were both still sleeping, too. Everyone but him was taking advantage of a roof and a fence.

But he had to redeem himself after last night. He had to prove to himself, to Carol, that he wasn't weak. That he wasn't worthless.

And so he went out to hunt.

He walked out into the deep blue morning and breathed deep. The air was thick with dew and growing grass.

And the sour smell of gore.

He heard them when he bothered to listen. There was a dull roar of thumping bodies and disembodied moans emanating from the wooden fence, the wood wobbling slightly as the herd thumped against it.

He swallowed hard, his body going stiff, frozen with fear. They didn't know that there was meat behind that little fence, but if Judith awoke crying, if someone slammed a door, they were screwed.

But he couldn't do anything. All he had were four arrows. He couldn't fire one of the rifles, if he valued his life.

He was useless.

He stood with his back against the door and prayed.

Please be quiet. Please be quiet. Please don't wake up.

He waited until the sun started to peak, turning the sky a cloudy blue-yellow as it arose for the day. The thumps were getting fewer and farther between.

Maybe he could slip out now, take just a couple out and find some squirrels.

He hunched over and ran quickly across the waist high grass, lifting his feet high to keep from tripping. He came up to the fence and listened for them, and when they didn't seem to be too close, he scrambled up and landed heavily on the other side.

Six heads swiveled towards him, hissing and groaning as their bloody hands reached towards him.

He cursed loudly and backed towards the fence, popping one in the forehead with his bow. He discarded the now useless weapon and pulled out his deer knife, holding it blade-out as they came for him.

Temple. Thinnest part of the skull. Eyes. Not the forehead.

The first was fresh, with a cap still in his bald head. Daryl snarled as he recognized the man he had left for dead. The bastard still had his arrow in his heart.

He put him down quick.

The next two were older, half rotted, blood soaking every inch of them.

The next one was dressed in a bathrobe, with blood coagulating in her white hair at the ears. Her eyes and nose streamed blood, her lips still dripping the stuff that had made its way down her thin nightgown. Her pale skin was torn in several places, but he recognized her. He recognized her and he cried out because she was lost and whoever she was with was probably lost too.

The next was an older man, same deal. And then a young-ish man, a clear bite mark to his throat where his jugular had been shredded.

And suddenly he couldn't hold it back any longer, he couldn't do it, it was all too much and there was no one to catch him.

He collapsed on the ground and moaned and grieved for his lost friends, all the people he couldn't protect, all the people he had saved, only to be torn apart by bullets and teeth and sickness.

It was him. It was on him.

Mrs. Peters. Mr. Leurch. Jason.

They were dead. He had killed them.

oOo

He hid the bodies after he had calmed himself down. Held his breath as he dragged their three through the woods, then reached down and closed their bloodstained eyes and straightened their bodies.

It was all he could do. More than he could do, really. Hershel would tan his hide if he knew he had been handling infected bodies without gloves or so much as a handkerchief to ward off the pathogen.

Hershel. He couldn't tell the others about this, definitely not Tyreese or Beth.

But Daryl was pretty positive at this point that he was either immune to this certain flu strain, or he was just a carrier. He had had enough fence duty, had dug enough graves to have long been infected. Not to mention he was in very close contact with people who had later contracted it.

Patrick. Another little boy on his list.

It was getting harder and harder to keep track of, his list. He had kept it vigorously before and after the Turn, but now? He could only guess.

Before it had been easy. Mama. His friend Buck. Merle's ex-girlfriend Dana.

And that was it. He had three lives on his conscience.

Now he had run out of fingers to count them on.

But they were there, and he knew he would be called accountable for each and every one of them. He had dreams of judges coming down on him with hammers, their parchment list of lives rolling to his feet and out the door.

How could you have killed so many people, Daryl?

How could you have survived while they died?

How are you worth enough to live in the space they vacated?

You're not.

He wasn't. He wasn't.

But he had to make up for it, had to make up for his uselessness, his weakness, so he hunted, brought down game that they didn't really need, and skinned it and gutted it out in the woods, came back with it for Carol to cook.

The house was awake when he returned. Carol had the girls packing their things into the trunk of that little Civic, and Beth was rolling a dirty tennis ball back and forth to Judith on the floor.

Tyreese was going around the house, pulling blinds and shutting doors.

"We're glad you could join us!" Beth called from the living room as he stepped over the threshold. Judith whipped her little head around and giggled, and he smiled at her. He held up the plucked duck he had shot near the river, and she fake-gagged, shaking her head at Judith. "Yucky!" she chirped in that voice she reserved just for the girl, sticking out her tongue and shaking her head. Judith stuck her tongue out back at her, and Beth clapped for her.

He continued on with his find, plopping it in the sink for someone else to deal with before they went.

Carol stomped back into the house, dragging her muddy boots on the welcome mat as she did. She caught him staring and smiled wide, batted her eyes at him.

He almost let himself laugh at her. Almost.

But after last night, he knew he couldn't let himself go there with her. At least not yet. He was too broken, too far gone, and until he fixed himself, she would only lower herself to meet him.

And he couldn't allow that.

So he let his eyes go back to the duck, and decided now was as good as time as any to deal with it.

He stomped around the kitchen, opening all the drawers to find the knife drawer, when someone bumped him with their hip, holding out a blade handle-out, lax-wristed.

He knew who it was, so he took it without looking. He couldn't. He had to.

She didn't act like she knew what he was doing, just sighed and turned back to the girls, helping them pack the new found sleeping bags into the crammed trunk.

She probably thought he was just embarrassed after last night, which was true. But there was so much more to it than that.

He would protect her. And he would fix himself. And then, maybe then… Maybe then, things could be better.

He cut up the bird into chunks, and then took a pan outside to build a fire and cook it. It was almost second-nature, this catching-and-cooking-and-eating part of their lives, but the girls were obviously not very well-versed in this tactic, and glued themselves to his side as he built the fire and threw the meat onto the pan.

Mika watched with a child's sick fascination, her eyes wide, nose wrinkled. Lizzie watched, stone cold, head slightly cocked, eyes lazy.

He hated that kid.

They ate, and then they left.

OoO

The road was open and empty before them. There were still two evacuation houses they could check, and given the close proximity to the prison, wouldn't take but half a day to check each.

The ride was cramped, to say the least. Tyreese rode up front while Carol drove, and Daryl, Beth, Mika, and Lizzie squeezed in the back, Judith on Beth's lap.

Judith loved the car, loved the windows, was mesmerized by the sights before her. Beth held her close and pointed to objects, naming them softly and slowly under her breath, enunciating clearly and repeating herself a couple times.

She didn't teach her walker, though. Daryl caught that much.

The second house had a wrought-iron fence. It was an old plantation house with big oak trees along the oyster shell driveway, tall pillars lining the front like the White House.

This house had been chosen for its sturdy fence and generators.

They knew something was up when they approached, and the gate creaked loosely on its hinges. Both the truck and the mini van that was left here was gone, and the front door swung in the wind.

Carol reached across the gear shift and took Tyreese's hand. She glanced up in the rearview at the five of them in the back, then looked to Daryl.

She parked the car.

"Let's go check it out," she stated tiredly, her eyes flickering as she withdrew her hand from Tyreese and took her handgun off the dash, checking the bullets and flipping the safety.

Daryl nodded to her and took his crossbow from its place on the back dash, crawling over the little girls to get to the trunk, where the twin semi-automatics were.

They slammed the doors in unison, eyes both jolting to find the source of a loud moan. When the body stumbled out from behind the house, she turned to look at him.

"Ready?"

He nodded grimly.

oOo

The walker was old, none of their own. Carol sighed with relief and skipped to put it down, but Daryl wasn't so easily persuaded. He remembered what he saw. He knew that anyone who had been sick had probably not made it out alive, or had been taken out on the bus.

They could be stumbling around that big old house, just waiting for someone to devour.

He walked up the steps, evaluating the marks on the banisters as he went. There were two bullet holes near the bottom, and a single set of bloody footprints that doubled and tripled over themselves chaotically, as if the person had had a nervous break and had started running circles.

Carol came up behind him, placed a hand gently on the middle of his back. He stiffened immediately, but couldn't make himself move away from her.

"What do you see?" she asked under her breath.

He shook his head, fought to think beyond the warmth spreading up and down his spine.

He coughed, shook his head harder. "Just one person. Looks kinda small."

She nodded thoughtfully and started climbing again, letting her hand drop.

He followed after her, his crossbow held high, his gun on his shoulder. They crossed the threshold slowly, but Carol whipped across her arm to stop him from taking another step. She held her finger up to her lips and pointed.

Daryl followed her finger and felt the blood rush from his face.

There was a dead man on the ground, his chest completely excavated of its contents. His face was white, not gray yet, and his nose and eyes leaked blood.

There were two other bodies beside him, another young man, and what looked to be a young woman. Their hands and mouths were covered in gore, their fingernails torn, their teeth clotted with bone and flesh.

There were clear bullet holes in all three of them, once in the forehead.

But that wasn't the worst.

Daryl stepped forward to see better, and Carol practically fell over herself trying to drag him back.

But he had to see, had to see if they were his, had to see what it was.

They weren't his, but it didn't matter. They were on the list now. They would have lived if the Governor hadn't come, if he had kept looking and found him and put him down months ago, like he should have.

Someone had written a message in the lake of blood, their boots dragging clear letters through the jelly.

"Only Ten Left Now. Going To Next House," he breathed.

Carol brought in a shuddering breath, leaned on the doorframe. He turned quickly to offer a hand, to hold her up, but she warded him off with a palm and shook her head. Brought her hands up to her mouth as she took in the horrific sight before them.

"We can't tell them," she whispered in grief. "We can't tell them what we saw here."

Daryl nodded his head at her, breathed deep from his mouth to keep the pervasive stench of brains and death from his nose.

She straightened quickly, set her pistol down on the little buffet table by the door. "I'll take the pantry," she intoned solemnly, stepping around the blood as best she could to get to the kitchen just a few feet away.

He knew he needed to go look elsewhere, gather the flashlights and pocket knives, but he couldn't let himself leave her, completely exposed, as she bent beneath the table to pull out the backpack that someone had left. She had just put her gun down, and what if there was something else in the house, something waiting and lurking, and the second he left the room, it lurched from the shadows and took her?

He couldn't put her down. He couldn't have her on his list.

He couldn't do it.

And so he walked behind her and stood and waited, his bow hanging, controlled, from his palms as he scanned the yard through the windows, strained to see through the dark hallways.

She didn't tell him to go. She didn't even acknowledge his presence.

He figured she was probably just too proud to admit that it made her feel better to have someone watching her back.

She straightened slowly, slinging the orange backpack over her shoulder. Her chin quivered a little as she pulled out a little stack of papers, each no bigger than a playing card, and laid them in his palm.

He flipped them over and felt reflect Maggie's smile. He shuffled the pictures quickly, finding ones of Carol and himself by the kitchen area, of Beth with Judith, of Michonne peeking over Carl's shoulder has he read comic books on his bunk.

There was only one person they knew who could take these pictures, the only person not present in a single one in the whole stack.

"I think we can tell them this," he answered, placing the cards back into Carol's hand. She smiled and wiped a couple tears from her eyes, zipping them back up safely in an outer pocket.

"I think we can," she wobbled.

OoO

AN #2: If this doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry. It's Mardi Gras and I'm not exactly sober. ;) Thanks for reading!