AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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You should talk to Daryl.

Carol had been carrying around the cryptic message from Rick all morning. She didn't know what to do with it. She didn't even know where to begin to dissect it and figure out what it might mean.

If it hadn't been for the expression on his face, the tone of his voice, and the look in his eyes—all these things combined—she might have thought it was as simple as any other piece of "direction" that they all received during a morning of packing up and preparing to move on.

But Rick's tone had made her a little uneasy. It had made her almost certain that it wasn't a conversation that she'd be having with Daryl over when they needed to organize the next supply run or how they could expect to handle the weather changes between now and when they reached—if they ever did—their destination in Virginia.

It felt much more foreboding than that.

And it almost made Carol nauseous because, naturally, she didn't care for conflict. Especially if it was conflict that could be avoided and conflict that occurred between herself and someone she cared for so much.

Still, she needed to talk to him which meant, probably, he needed to talk to her. So she gathered her courage up through the morning, set off with everyone else in the slow and dragging pace that they seemed to start every day with—a pace that got faster through the middle of the day and began to lag again as they neared the close of the day—and she walked in silence with Tyreese near her, thankfully never asking her what she might be stewing about, until she saw her chance to speak with Daryl.

He ambled along, in front of the group and off to the side, very nearly slogging through slightly muddy ditches to avoid close proximity to the group, and Carol sped up her steps and jogged to catch up with him.

"We need to talk?" Carol asked, her breath picking up slightly from the burst of exertion.

"Do we?" Daryl asked.

He visibly glanced back toward the group.

"That what Rick told you?" He asked.

"Well he told me I needed to talk to you," Carol offered. "Was he wrong?"

Daryl didn't respond verbally, but he did something of a dramatic shrug and missed a step as he kicked at the ground below his feet to punish it for whatever was going through his mind. Instinctively, Carol reached a hand out as though she could stop him from falling in the same manner that she might have caught Sophia a time or two when the girl stumbled near her.

But she didn't have to catch him and he didn't fall. He was surer on his feet than most and one missed step, especially when he saw it coming, wasn't going to take him to his knees.

"What you doing with him?" Daryl asked.

His voice didn't sound as much accusatory as it simply sounded tired. And Carol felt her stomach churn. Immediately she knew what he was talking about. Immediately it hit her that he was aware of what was happening between she and Rick—even if they weren't entirely sure themselves. He knew, at least, as much as she did.

And it felt, at the moment, when her body tensed like she was going to have to confess some infidelity to the man, even though there was no infidelity.

She loved Daryl. She knew that. She loved him very much and cared for him deeply. And, if he'd come to her bed? If he'd been the one knocking at her door and requesting—and she wasn't even sure she'd have required the words, just the action—something more with her? She knew that she would have given everything she had over to him.

But he'd never come. And he never was coming.

And if he came now? She would feel as though it were nothing more than some kind of competition—some tale as old as time between men that would war over women—whether or not it was the case. And the last thing that Carol wanted was to be a trophy to be won.

She'd already been an object to someone. She didn't want to feel like that again. She didn't want to be a possession. She didn't even wish to be treated as a prized possession. So she certainly didn't want to be a prize to be won.

The one thing she was sure of, no matter what happened or didn't happen between she and Rick, was that she wanted to be treated like a person. If that wasn't in the cards, then it could end right away and she'd be fine with it.

And even though she doubted, in some place inside her, that she would become any kind of prize to be fought for—or that Daryl was even capable of feeling that way about her—she knew that now her own mind would be set against any of his advances. It would be something she created, perhaps, but it would be something that she couldn't overcome.

"I don't know," she said finally.

Daryl looked at her, brow furrowed. His features gave way to a quick second of amusement and then returned to their concerned expression.

"You don't know what the hell you doing?" He asked.

"Literally?" Carol responded. "I know what I'm doing. Beyond that? I don't think I'm ready to answer that question."

Daryl stepped closer to her, almost touching her, and he rushed his steps forward one or two more as though to put a few feet more between them and the group ambling at some distance, already, behind them. Carol naturally matched him and kept the proximity between them that he'd established.

"You've said to me before—in some words—he ain't stable," Daryl said.

Carol swallowed.

She had said that. She believed that, honestly. Rick wasn't stable. He probably offered no more stability than attempting to stand on a table with four loose legs. He hadn't handled what happened to Lori. It wasn't even that Carol could say that he hadn't handled it well. He simply hadn't handled it.

And she wasn't a teenage dreamer that believed that she could fix that for him. That was something he was going to have to handle himself. Maybe she'd be there with him. Maybe she could be there for him. But at the end of the day it was his burden to shoulder and they were his emotions to work through. Carol wasn't able to fix that for him.

Ed had taught her, after all, that the belief that you can fix anyone is a foolish belief.

"He's not stable," Carol ceded. "But—I don't know if anyone is anymore."

Daryl looked at her, the intent stare that he had for a moment given to her, and then he dropped his gaze back to watch what his dirty boots looked like as they scuffed along the asphalt.

"I know that I'm not trying to fix him," Carol said.

Daryl hummed, still watching his boots.

"I know that—I don't expect him to fix me," Carol added, even though it was the first time that she'd really let her thoughts go that far. Even as the words fell out of her mouth, she was realizing for the first time that they were true. She was hearing them, herself, the first time that she shared them with Daryl.

Daryl hummed again, but he didn't speak. Carol let him have his silence for a moment, but at the end of that moment she decided to push him. If they were meant to talk, then that meant he had to contribute something. Otherwise, this was really nothing more than an interrogation.

"What is on your mind?" She asked. "What do you have to say—because you might as well just say it."

"It gonna change anything?" He asked after a minute.

Carol thought about it.

"Depends on what it is," she said.

He chuckled to himself, but it wasn't genuine amusement. There was something else there.

"Then it ain't gonna change nothing," he mumbled. This time, though, when he fell into silence again, Carol responded by simply staring him into submission. As they walked, she kept her eyes pegged on him, rolling them every now and again only to assure herself that she wasn't going to walk into anything, and finally he rolled his toward her.

"Fall down walkin' like that," he commented.

"You can step over me," Carol countered. "Or—" she added, hesitating a moment afterward, "you can help me up."

"Been doin' that," Daryl replied.

But he looked uncomfortable and it didn't take more than a fraction of a moment before he spoke again.

"I can't say I think it's a good idea," Daryl said. "I don't wanna see you—I don't want him hurting you."

Carol swallowed. The sentiment was genuine. It was, arguably, one of the nicest things that Daryl had really ever said to her. He could be quite reserved with his words. Part of caring for Daryl was learning to appreciate what you simply knew he meant in the silence as much as it ever was about the words.

"I don't want to get hurt," Carol said. "And I'm trying not to be stupid. But—I don't think that he wants to hurt me."

Daryl shook his head after a second.

"He don't want to do half of what he does," he commented.

That was truth too. And it was becoming more and more clear to Carol that this was something Daryl had thought about to a great extent.

"I care about Rick," Carol offered. "Even—even after—what happened? I care about Rick."

Daryl looked at her, furrowed his brow, and nodded slightly before he looked away again.

He didn't seem to have the ability to say any of the things that he had to say while looking at her, and Carol respected that.

"He cares about you too," Daryl said.

Carol felt surprised by the revelation of Rick's feelings by Daryl's words.

"How do you know?" Carol asked.

"Because I asked," Daryl responded matter of factly. "He cares about you."

"Well…" Carol said, letting out a sigh at the end because she wasn't sure, at first, what she wanted to say. "I guess that's good to know," she finished, thinking that she might not really let it go to her head as a confirmation of any kind of feeling without hearing it from Rick.

After all, there was caring about someone, and then there was caring about someone—and a lot was left up to context. She hadn't even put to words yet, or fully accepted in her mind, the way she felt about Rick. She wasn't going to expect him to have given some deep and meaningful explanation of his feelings for her to Daryl.

Though, sometimes, it was easier to tell someone not involved how you felt than it was to tell the very person that you should be speaking to.

"Daryl," Carol said, "what about you?"

He looked at her. Something flashed across his face, but it might have been her projecting it there. She thought, though, that it almost looked like a second of fear or the warning of some kind of approaching panic.

She'd never asked him before, not really, and certainly not point blank, how he felt about her. Maybe that was her own fault, but she'd always felt he wasn't ready for the question.

Now she wondered if it was only that she hadn't been ready for the answer.

She couldn't dwell on that, though. Not knowing how she felt now—how she was sure that she could accept the offer of nothing more than friendship from Daryl. Because if she dwelled on it, it might simply send her spiraling into the world of "what ifs" and that was a place in which she spent far too much time already.

"Me what?" Daryl asked.

Carol swallowed.

"I care for you," she admitted. "I…" she hesitated, her brain conflicted a moment, before she continued. "I love you. I consider you—my very best friend. How do you—how does that make you feel?"

Daryl looked at her, shook his head gently, and then looked back ahead of them like there was something to study beyond the tree line and the road.

"Same," he said.

For a moment, Carol didn't say anything. She walked along, thinking over what he'd said—one word that, maybe, said a good deal.

"It's Rick…and it's you. If it makes you happy?" Daryl hesitated a moment before he said anything else, and when he did speak again, it was clear that he was leaving some of the sentiment out. "But I ain't gonna let him hurt you," Daryl finished.

And before Carol could say anything else in regard to the whole conversation, Daryl took off in a jog. She watched him. He trotted ahead to where there was a solitary Walker ambling out of the tree line. The Walker would have been fine to wait on them to get there, but she already knew it was more to escape the conversation. It was his way of saying that they'd talked, and now the talk was done in his mind.

And Carol realized that it meant, more than anything else, that she and Rick were the ones who really needed to talk.