(Hello lovely readers. I'm just going to point out that I'm ill today so I sincerely hope my fic lives up to all the wonderful feedback I've been getting, thank you all so much! I use lyrics apart from my usual foreshadowing ones in this from 'Hunter' by Heather Dale, I suggest you go listen. It's THE perfect Caryl song. As always, read my chapter and feedback is appreciated, if not I hope you enjoy anyway! :D)

Chapter Two; Knife Point

If I could kidnap an angel
She'd say the word,
She'd tear down these walls.
People laughing like children
Through these hospital halls,
There'd be no more tears
There'd be no more blood
There'd be nothing but smiles
Nothing but love
If I could kidnap an angel
~ Jon Bon Jovi

These were the moments, Carol decided, which she existed for. Her legs were tucked up comfortably beneath her, the soft skin of her knees resting on the firm earthen ground still scarcely touched by patches of grass or flowers. A fire roared in its stone pit nearby, bathing the two of them in a lake of heat and light, enlightening every soft feature on both their faces. Above them, stars blinked in drowsy awe as the pair rested, frozen in time and space, utterly simpatico with one another. The wind was nothing she had ever felt in autumn before, it flickered lazily like a summer breeze and the chilliness in the air was so mild it failed to penetrate her bare skin buried within his jacket. Her hands were gentle as she lightly stroked his brow, running her fingers across each crease and line that a lifetime of living rough had carved into him.

It charmed her that nobody else ever got to see Daryl like this. His head was cradled in her lap, his short brown hair tickling the pale, exposed skin of her thigh. His face was calm, restful and blank in sleep, his lips slightly apart as he breathed gently, each breath causing ripples in the perfectly still grass. What surprised her was how peaceful he looked when he slept; no more did he have to wear the rigid face of authority, instead his habitually intense, heavy lidded eyes were shut in heavenly slumber and his often stony features had softened and were beautifully calm in the assortment of firelight and starlight. She leaned slowly down towards him and tenderly kissed his forehead, sufficiently gently enough not to rouse him but firmly enough to cause his lips to split into a content smile as he felt her loving gesture.

She often pondered, when they were like this together, whether he once had a mother who would do the same thing, cradle his head on her lap and calm him to sleep after a nightmare. She pulled his jacket a little further over her naked body as a breeze whipped its icy hand across her back and sent her into a cold shiver. She speculated that if his mother ever did this for him, it would assumedly be in a quiet back room of a house, in Daryl's room. She wondered if he ever had football posters. Perhaps posters of a group of scantily clad, well-endowed women in his teenage years. A laugh rose up in her throat as she wondered what he had been like before all this and she fought to stop herself from giggling and disturbing him. She looked down into his angelic face and her smile grew wide. Then she had another query. She wondered if he ever knew his mother.

It occurred to her that actually, in the scheme of things, she really knew very little about him.

But she also appreciated that this meant he knew nothing of her old life. It was merely days since Sophia had been found in the barn, and she had been fighting to not think about how things used to be. Indeed, her husband was an evil man and there was nothing he had that she would ever trade Daryl for, but she would give up her own love and happiness for another chance to hold her daughter in a heartbeat. Something told her, had they found Sophia, she would have been incredibly happy with Daryl as a makeshift replacement father. She hadn't minded when she caught her mother kissing him in the back of Rick's car back in Atlanta, and why should she? Carol smiled a little and patted Daryl's head. They could've been a family.

She hadn't always been Ed's punch bag. Once upon a time she had a high position in life, her father was a successful entrepreneur and her mother was his assistant- never before had a love been truer than theirs. But temptation had overtaken her father when she was still young and an affair had happened, leading to a particularly messy divorce and leaving Carol with her mother, now penniless and depressed. She married Ed at the age of sixteen and suffered ever after in his company, constantly dodging fists and nursing wounds at his mercy. That was all there was to it; a short, sad series of events leading to a particularly volatile marriage with only Sophia to show for it. She was Carol's angel, the light leading her out of darkness. A tear sprang to her eyes. How wretched it was for a mother to watch her own offspring die before her.

"Carol?" His voice carried her out of her considerations and she dared herself to look down into his lovely dark eyes, squinting in sleepiness. He smiled and slowly hauled himself upright to sit, facing her squarely, gently wiping away the streak of moisture trailing from her eye and down her thin cheek with his thumb. Both wide, rough hands found their way around her waist and he pulled her close to him, the warmth of his body an amazing sensation against her exposed skin. "You're freezing." He muttered.

She smirked and playfully pushed him down, flat onto his back. She straddled him and looked straight down. Somehow, he found that when she looked directly into his eyes she was not looking at him but rather through him, like she could read his mind. He smiled a little and once more wrapped both sturdy muscular arms around her tightly, pulling her chest to meet his. For the briefest of moments, they could've been teenagers fooling around on the grass in a park somewhere, no zombies, no horrors, no past. They could've been Romeo and Juliet- unlikely star crossed lovers, their love so powerful it defies death. Words on a page.

'Slip the jesses, my love
This hunter you own from the hood to the glove
When the circling and striking are done, and I land,
Let me come back to your hand, let me come back to your hand'

It was something she had heard long ago, some song or another they played on the radio once as she drove regretfully to pick Ed up from some social function she had been commanded not to attend- whether due to her plainly visible bruises or his desire to flirt and kiss around she didn't know. She merely knew his friends had grown tired of her excuses; only so many times does 'I fell down stairs' and 'I walked into a door' work before people became cautious. The song had uplifted her spirits, a song about falconry she thought but suddenly it had a totally separate meaning. She shifted her weight over and rolled off his body, landing softly beside him with a quiet thud. She took the time to prop herself up on her elbow and gaze into his eyes while he slowly drifted into sleep. Come back to my hand. My hunter.

It was the third time he had paced anxiously around the room, his head spinning and his eyes moving frantically as he digested the information. It had no business being there, laid on the floor, mocking him. This cell block had been left alone, untouched by any of the group and it was three days since Carol had been lost. It was unmistakable, though; he had carved a unique pair of delicate feather wings into it for her a long time ago, back when they were the best of friends. The rusted, chipped blade was plastered with blood and whatever other foul smelling bile it had encountered on its way through a Walker's skull but still, it was her knife.

He paused in his lap of the room for a brief moment to kick the blade onto its reverse side and he admired the way it clinked on the floor, but quickly returned to pacing. Glenn and Rick stood watching, their faces blank. They had all lost someone special to them over the past few weeks, so who were they to interrupt him as he finally stopped forcing himself to ignore what had happened and digested the idea of the one he lost still being alive. They would give anything for that chance.

It was true, they all knew, that no body had been found to fill Carol's grave. They had assumed she was completely devoured like Lori but it was obvious now from the way he stormed around the hard floor like a typhoon that he was contemplating the idea she might have lived. Perhaps she found her way here, he wondered. They had cleared out many Walkers to get to this particular cell block but she was much smaller than any of them, perhaps she had found a crawl space and this was where she popped out. Only two freshly destroyed Walker corpses that they were not responsible for lay in the room, but the picture was coming together in his head. She popped out of somewhere, killed two then fled the scene looking for safety? He swallowed a lump in his throat. Looking for him?

Rick had gotten past his stage of anger and grief had overcome him, rendering him totally docile. Unhappy with the loss of his friend, Glenn's only occupation had become caring for the new baby with Maggie and this had also rendered him sleep deprived and equally passive. Daryl had taken charge, balancing his time between clearing the prison buildings, spending time with 'Carol' and maintaining the peace and welfare of the group. He wondered, for a brief moment, whether a search for Carol was possible with such burdens. But he also knew he would never forgive himself if he didn't try.

"You guys head back." He barked, to little resistance or indeed reaction from his companions. "I'm gonna take a look around now its secure here. The two of you need rest." They nodded, no words were spoken and the exchange was done. Within a few seconds they had wandered, as lively as Walkers, out into the rest of the prison to find their way back. And Daryl was left alone, buried in hostile silence, staring at a knife.

Her breath was rapid, she could feel her heart pounding in her ears. She was engulfed in complete darkness, able only to hear the rumbling noise of a car's engine and its wheels against a rough road in need of repair. Her hands and feet were bound, her eyes covered with a thick black cloth and she got the impression she was in the boot of the car, and in terrible danger. It seemed like an eternity before she caught the sound of breaks squealing to a halt and it was a long time until she felt fingers prising her upwards and digging into her ribs. She was led somewhere, still denied the privilege of sight and yet another great gap of time passed before she was allowed to see.

She found herself staring up at a ceiling. Any other time a ceiling would have been unremarkable, but this time she found herself staring directly into a wide, fresh splatter of blood streaked across it's emotionless grey surface. She was only vaguely aware of two people stood beside the makeshift bed she had been laid on, but she knew both of them were male as she could hear a low pitch rumble of conversation. She attempted to haul herself upright but found herself weakened and the effort of the act overcame her and caused her to tumble limply back onto the bed. A single tear of frustration slipped down her cheek. How could they think they would get away with tranquilising her?

The thought broke and shattered, suddenly meaningless as the faces came into view and one was startlingly recognisable. Merle Dixon. Of course he would recognise her too, there were very few faces left to recognise in their world any more. If she had the strength she knew her fist would fly into the air and plant itself neatly on his vicious smirk but she failed to move once again. Beside him the other man placed his hand squarely on the older Dixon's back and patted it gently.

"This is the one, huh?" He asked, to which Merle nodded gently. "Alright, come on darlin'." He added, pushing Merle away and snaking his arms around Carol's waist. She found herself lifted into an upright sitting position and she finally found she could look at the room. Though dark, without a streak of blood to stare at the room would have resembled a normal, if slightly neglected, hospital room. A third man dressed in a tight, filthy lab coat shuffled anxiously around the door, his hands knotted and wriggling. Tall railings with a thick blue curtain blocked her view from the other half of the room but she could tell something was being hidden behind them.

"Daryl?" She whispered, turning to the lost brother, a look of fear dancing on her face. He smiled that cruel, dumb smile.

"So, you're the one banging my brother then?" He mused, causing Carol to frown angrily. "Andrea did say somethin' of the sort. We found you wandering No-Man's-Land little lady. Looks like you were left for dead." That much was true. After the Walkers got in, it made sense in her frightened state to flee the prison. She had been racing away from the compound, the prison far behind her, trying to find safety, stumbling through the brush noisily when she was spotted by a Woodbury scout. It had been her intention to kick up as much dirt as possible so her lover could track her later. In the panic she didn't even feel the dart pierce her skin; the last thing she remembered was toppling to the ground, paralysed, and the sound of heavy boots making their way towards her. "There's a hope, though." He muttered cruelly, his voice so cold it suddenly sent shivers down her spine. "You tell us where my brother is and we'll go fetch him for you, let him know you're safe."

A million things whizzed through her head with that suggestion. The relief would be sweet should they find him and bring him to her, her mind filled lustfully with images of their reunion. She would leap out of bed and straight into his arms, he would twirl her around and both of them would fall in love all over again, except truer and nicer than ever before. But on the other hand, staring into Merle's darkened face she worried terribly about his intentions. She couldn't allow them to find him and hurt him, perhaps kill him. Daryl still cared deeply for his brother and would trust him implicitly, just the way to set up an ambush. She'd rather be dead. This life was fleeting and it was paramount that she made sure no harm came to him. Her face knotted and hardened and she stared up with determination on her face.

"No way."