For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.

Previously, on the Walking Dead: Carol has a great dream, spending time with Sophia in the summertime, and wakes up to the living nightmare.

Before

She wasn't sure she'd ever seen the sky that blue. As she stared up, she wondered what the name of that color might be. It was too pale to be a cobalt, too bright to be a cerulean. She knew it was just perfect, whatever it was.

"Mom?"

"Mm?" Carol asked, her hands resting on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles as she lay stretched out in the sunshine. The grass felt cool and soft, bent beneath her.

"You're doing that slow thing again."

She laughed. "Sophia, patience is a virtue."

"What's a virtue?"

"A trait we should all strive to have."

"What's a trait?"

"You know, a behavior." Before Sophia could ask again, Carol said: "And a behavior is a way to act." She turned her head, to see her daughter's blond locks splayed out across the ground, a mischievous smile on her mouth.

"What's an act?"

"This thing you're doing now," Carol explained, smiling herself.

Sophia giggled.

"Isn't it nice, just to be here?"

The little girl shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. There are other places to be, other things to see."

"And there you are, in a rush again."

She sat up, picking a blade of grass from the arm of her tee shirt. "I can't help it. I want to see it all."

Carol took a slow, deep breath. "And you will, someday. But don't do everything at once. It makes life no fun. Once you've done it, what's left for you to do, hmm?"

"To do it all again. Like our race..."

Carol felt a peculiar sensation, like she had remembered the run, but she was unable to pull up all the details. She could remember having fun, feeling free, but the act itself was somehow missing from her memory.

"You know you had fun." Sophia got to her feet, tugging her mother to hers.

Another night, another dream. She hated that she was awake, in the dark, foreboding world. She missed the field with Sophia. While she knew it wouldn't and couldn't be her reality, not until she, too, found her way to heaven someday, she felt a tremendous sense of loss. Like Cinderella at midnight, she was no longer in the idyllic life she craved, but in the wretched one she was made to live.

It was another morning waking up under Daryl's watchful eyes.

She offered him a slight smile and a tiny wave before getting up and gathering up her blanket.

While he wasn't one for idle conversation, he did feel the need to make a comment. "Don't remember you bein' up early like this before."

Before. There were so many benchmarks marked by that one word. She remembered a time before she was married, before Sophia was born, before the walker plague came about, before Sophia died. She knew, though, that his before was before they left the farm, even before they had arrived at the farm in the first place. She gave a slight shrug. "Believe me, if I could sleep longer, I would."

It seemed a strange statement backed with such wistfulness that he felt compelled to question: "What do you mean?"

She took a slow breath, glancing around the camp. Everyone else was breathing deeply, evenly. She envied them. "I know that it's weird, but I've actually had sweet dreams the past two nights."

Daryl arched an eyebrow. He'd seen most of the group wake up in cold sweats, feeling for weapons, reaching out to family to make sure they were still close. He hadn't heard one of them say anything about having a nice dream.

"Sophia is there. It's... It's like heaven, or what I imagine it might be like."

"Must make this world an even bigger let down."

In spite of everything, she gave him a rare, broad smile. "It just means that there's another sixteen, eighteen hours till I can sleep again, till I can see my baby."

It hadn't been the response he'd been expecting in the slightest. The world around them was hellish, horrible. People—loved ones—died in the most gruesome, bloody ways. Witnessing violent murders at the hands of unthinking, unyielding predators was more than enough to make anyone consider giving up. Their group was fractured, on-edge. With their numbers ever declining, it was clear that the differing of opinions would not be tolerated under any circumstances. He didn't know much about history, but he knew that wars were fought and countries were fractured over differing opinions. They were all walking a fine line.

Except, Carol was happy, throwing beaming smiles around like before everything. Not that he'd known her then, but he could imagine. He could imagine Sophia's in return, just like her mother's. It didn't matter how much crap Ed had thrown at them before, it was still better than going hungry, than watching for signs of trouble at every turn, or the unending death that surrounded them. At least, it was in his mind.

Stay tuned...