Begins with the events of the season 5 Finale, Conquer. Spoilers if you haven't yet watched it.

Morgan has just saved Daryl and Aaron from the Wolf trap; Carol has just threatened Pete, the Porch Dick (with apologies to the actor, Corey Brill, who is by all indications, a lovely man).

Behind Blue Eyes

No one knows what it's like
to be the sad man
to be the bad man
behind blue eyes...

No one knows what it's like
to be hated
to be fated
to telling only lies..."
-The Who

50 Miles from the ASZ

"We best be movin' on before the bad guys show up." Daryl rasped, covering his surprise at seeing Rick's name on the map that their savior had shown them.

"We bring back the good ones." As they headed out, Aaron explained their mission, why they'd been at the factory searching for the man in the red poncho.

Daryl brought up the rear, watching their six for any sign they were being followed, his bow at the ready.

"That what I am?" the new man asked, his deadly quarter staff now repurposed as a walking stick as they made their way to Aaron's car and Daryl's Scrambler, hidden in the forest near the wolf trap he'd helped them escape not ten minutes ago.

Morgan—he'd told them was his name—was not unfamiliar to Daryl. Rick, Michonne and Carl had all spoken of the damaged solitary soul who had taken over the Grimes' home town. Last they'd known the man was a head case; so far gone after the loss of his family that he'd refused to come to the prison.

Daryl asked the man why he'd saved them and been fed some bullshit line about "all life being precious." When he'd replied that whoever set the trap they'd sprung didn't seem quite the precious sort, Aaron reminded him that part of their job entailed the winnowing of the good from bad, that there were some living ones now that just weren't worth the trouble. Morgan said he'd rather save them all and let life sort out the rest; that good or bad, alive was better than the dead.

"Saved our asses; 's good enough." Daryl said, low and quick, in almost a mumble that both Aaron and Morgan had to work to catch. They shared a look, Morgan questioning, Aaron slightly smug.

"And this place you're from, Blue eyes? Where we're headed?' Morgan asked Daryl, "They good people too?"

"Most of 'em." Daryl grunted in reaction to the nickname. He looked over at Aaron and gestured to Morgan's staff. "Whatta ya think? Little John? Obi Wan? Splinter? Gandalf?"

Morgan raised an eyebrow at them and then nodded in appreciation at the pop culture references.

"Let's go with Obi Wan, Chewbacca." Aaron grinned at his shaggy friend, who snorted.

"Yeah? So what does that make you?" Daryl scoffed, though silently acknowledging the crossbow and the fringe, the monosyllabic vocabulary did give him a Wookie vibe.

"Han Solo, of course." Aaron preened.

"Nah—I'd go with C-3PO." Morgan disagreed, looking over the clean and pressed Lands End wear worn by Daryl's articulate traveling companion.

"Nope, Yoda." Daryl pronounced with a wry deadpan look.

That actually made Aaron stop and give Daryl a thoughtful smile and nod of thanks. He was glad to think that anything he'd said had been seen as wise by the Archer.

"Home we shall be going then?" Aaron asked laconically, inclining his head slightly at Morgan, who grinned and shook his head.

Daryl snorted in derision but grinned.

The ability to engage in such easy going banner after so narrowly escaping death was one of the odd coping mechanisms that life of the road seemed to have taught them all. It was more than just gallows humor though; it was an assertion of life—that it went on, so you might as well enjoy it and those around you while you could.

ASZ

Carol stood with her back against the door she had just exited, leaning on it for support, her knees almost giving way as the adrenalin rush dissipated, threatening to buckle out from under her. She startled when she heard the heavy glass casserole dish clatter to the floor from the house interior and took that as her cue to push off the door and across the porch, down the three stairs to the side walk and out onto the street. She stopped; drawing herself up, straightening the baby blue cardigan, making sure it covered the hilt and blade of the knife she'd used to make her position clear to the doctor.

Pete, that was his name. Jessie's husband, Sam's father. Bully, drunk, abuser...weak...nothing...

When she'd held the razor sharp trench knife to his throat she thought of the other lives she had taken with it, how hard that had been. Even though they'd been dying, drowning in their own blood, they'd been her friends, people she had promised to protect, to nurse. But when they'd become a threat to the rest, to the children and those she loved most? She'd done what she had to. She'd killed so others could live. She'd hated it, but she'd done it.

If Andrea had done as she'd advised at the Prison? Used her wiles and her knife on Blake? How many more of them might still be alive?

Carol thought she understood why Andrea hadn't acted. How many times in her life before the Turn had she been unable to?

She'd never told Daryl why she'd gone to the shelter in Atlanta with Sophia, only that they hadn't stayed. He probably assumed it was because Ed had beaten her badly enough that she'd tried to escape, but it hadn't been that at all. It was because she had frightened herself with what she'd almost done.

Carol's parents were gone, she had no friends—Ed had made sure of that over the years—and so in the end she'd done what she'd always done. Made plans to avoid the reality of her life.

Someone had given her a card; the school nurse when Sophia had gotten sick and Carol had to come pick her up. Ed was gone, off with his cronies on a long weekend hunting trip for opening day of deer season. Exhausted from doing all of the packing and preparation for his trip she hadn't awoken at five a.m. to cook his breakfast as he'd demanded and he'd dragged her out of bed by her hair.

It'd been a bad morning after; she had visible bruises this time: one eye almost swollen shut, the pitying stares from the people in the school office, from the nurse. The card for the shelter had been stapled to the paperwork excusing Sophia from school.

The next morning Carol stood in the bathroom of their house and held the card in one hand and a bottle of sleeping pills in the other; just stood there for the longest time, staring at her face in the mirror. One eye was startlingly blue, the other filled with blood from the capillaries broken by a close fisted hand.

Carol put down the card and opened the child proof bottle. She shook all of the pills out into her hand, contemplating them.

How many would it take? She wondered.

She took a step back, lifted the lid of the toilet and opened her hand, letting the pills cascade down into the bowl, flushing them away. Flushing her plan away...

...the sleeping pills she'd saved to mix into Ed's beer and favorite tuna casserole, the skinning knife she'd taken from the garage locker where he stored his hunting gear, the afternoons at the public library learning that it didn't matter how big a body was, they were all reduced to a bloody soup when placed in a good old Rubbermaid tub with the right kind of acid.

But then what? Without her husband what was she? How could she raise Sophia, alone, on the run?

She lifted the card, read the name and address. Set it back down and picked up the knife and hacked away at her hair, the long russet curls threaded with grey falling into the sink. Ed's electric razor took care of the rest.

Her resolve and their stay at the shelter lasted as long as the rest of Ed's hunting trip.

The dead began to walk a few weeks later.

She'd told Daryl, there in Atlanta after her return visit to that place that promised safety, that the Carol with no resolve, who relied on prayers instead of action had burned away, and the one she'd become after losing Sophia, the woman who she always thought she should be? After losing the prison? She was all gone now too. She was strong because she had to be, to do what she had to do...

"She can't be around people..."

"I'm going to kill people."

Two conversations with Tyreese. The Grove. Terminus.

More deaths.

She'd had to. So they could live. So Rick and Carl had Judith back, so Sasha had Ty, and though she hadn't believed it could ever happen, not really, so that Daryl Dixon would come running across a forest glen, a smile of joy and relief on his bruised and battered face and grab her up in the most improbable and therefore most glorious hug she'd ever had. He kept her tethered to her humanity.

Just now? Facing down another woman's abusive husband? She said everything she'd always wanted to say to Ed, had felt like she had ice and fire running through her veins, and had started to enjoy his fear, thrill to the feeling of power, to know how easy it would've been to just draw the blade across his jugular. She'd told him how things had to be: do his assigned work as the town physician, look after Tara and anyone else who needed it, and stay away from his wife and sons.

"You put your hands your wife again? Your little girl? Anyone else in this camp? I'll kill you."

Carol winced at the echo of the voice in her head of the long dead deputy, Shane warning Ed after he had taken out his fury on him at the quarry. Heard the echo of what he'd said after the barn in what she'd said to Rick the day he'd exiled her...

"You don't have to like what I did, I don't, but I stepped up—I did something."

"I didn't kill two of our own." Rick had protested.

"No. Just one."

Shane had become a threat. Rick killed him. Rick had sent her away because he thought she was the same.

Was she?

Shane had told himself only he could protect Lori, Carl and the baby he believed was his.

Carol hadn't trusted the Council to do what was necessary to stop the plague. Had she been as arrogant as Shane? She had sacrificed the few to save the many at the Prison, had sacrificed a child to save another, had killed strangers to save the family at Terminus, and was playing the game again now with her Junior League costume, cookies, casseroles and stolen guns... what else would she have to sacrifice?

"You said we get to start over; did you?" she had asked Daryl at the shelter.

"I'm tryin'..."

She knew Daryl was still trying; he'd said as much with his refusal of the stolen gun, the way he'd jumped full throttle into recruiting, bonding with Aaron...

Was she?

"Come at me...no?...No." she'd said to Pete with disdain, seeing the fear and self loathing in the big man's eyes. She was strong, she was death, she was...

Was she trying?

ASZ: Town Meeting

"Rick! Do it!" Deanna's voice had been filled with anguish as she demanded her constable execute the out of control man who had just taken her husband from her in one awkward stroke of a stolen blade. In the time it took to fire a single gunshot, Pete lay dead at Rick's feet.

"Rick?" Morgan's disbelieving voice cut through the horrified silence and sobs of the Alexandrians. As he and the man whose life he'd saved so long ago stared at one another, Daryl scanned the crowd for his people, for Carol. He saw a grim looking Abraham and Eugene hovering protectively over someone on the ground next to the bloody body of Deanna's husband.

"I have to do it now, I'm sorry." Carol said gently to the man's wife and son, who both looked numbed with grief.

Deanna blinked uncomprehendingly until she saw the brass knuckled knife in Carol's hand. She looked up into Carol's eyes and then gave a curt nod of understanding.

"What are you..." Spencer gasped, moving to grab Carol's arm, but Deanna stopped him by grasping her son's hand tightly in her crimson covered one.

"Do it." Deanna said tightly.

"Don't look." Carol said.

Spencer gave an inarticulate cry of mourning and his mother pulled him into her arms, turning away, the two of them taking what strength they could from each other.

Daryl came close enough to hear the dull quick soft crunch through thin bone as Carol punched her blade through the man's ear and into his brain, preventing him from turning and bringing even more horror to the scene.

Carol wiped off her knife with a corner of her jacket and started to stand, but was stopped by the leader of the ASZ saying her name quietly.

"Carol?"

Carol crouched back down, her brow creased in concern. Had she overstepped?

"Thank you." the newly minted widow murmured.

Carol nodded and stood, giving both Abe and Eugene grateful looks before her face went back to its carefully constructed look of sympathetic concern, until her eyes met Daryl's.

He saw panic there, and what else? Was that...guilt?

ASZ: Team Family House

"I provoked him. I set him off. He took the katana from the house! Our house! What if Carl and Judith hadn't been with Rosita and Tara? What if they'd been home? What if he'd hurt them?"

"Carol—slow down—how did you provoke him?" Daryl said soothingly from his place sitting on their bed a few hours after his return.

She was pacing the room, agitated, shaking. It was better than the cold veneer of calm she'd projected for everyone else while they'd dealt with the aftermath of the day's extreme events, but he was struggling to understand why she was blaming herself for what Pete had done.

"It was Rick beatin' the shit out of him on Main Street in front of the whole town set him off." Daryl disagreed. He was having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that Rick had some sort of thing going on with the blonde, Jessie. She was married for Christ's sake! What the fuck was going on with most everyone he knew—Stepford Carol, Michonne hanging up her sword, Glenn getting blamed for losing two men on a run?

"I threatened him. Today. That was me." Carol said, stopping in front of him.

"You threatened him?" Daryl asked, his tone said he needed more explanation.

Carol moved to look out the window, pushing the curtain aside so she could see outside into the night. Abe and Tobin patrolled the street in front of their house. No one knew if more walkers had gotten inside the open gate and so Rick had set up a curfew patrol to keep watch over the houses while they searched. Daryl had just returned with Michonne and the new man, Morgan.

"I took him a casserole and held my knife to his throat and made sure he knew I'd use it if he ever hurt his family again." Carol said, her fingers tracing the hilt of her trench knife at her hip.

"Felt good, didn't it." Daryl said flatly.

Carol turned to face him, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes.

"Felt strong didn't it?—tellin' that asshole where to get off. Knowing you had the strength to back it up. Knowin' he'd never hurt anyone again." Daryl said fiercely, his look not the one of disapprobation she'd feared, but one of approval.

And then Carol knew—he'd have done the same. Her mouth trembled and she bit the inside of her lip.

"No way of knowin' how the rest would all go down." Daryl reminded her. "N' I'm sorry about Reg—he seemed like a stand up guy—but... now that woman and her sons got a chance to keep tryin'." he chuckled darkly then. "Well, as much of a chance as any of us got."

Carol looked back outside, down the street, wondering if anyone had broken the news to Sam yet. How would he react? With same relief she'd felt in Sophia when they'd buried Ed? Or would he truly mourn his father? The boy had asked for a gun to use against him...

"Do you think I'm trying, Daryl?" Carol said, letting the curtain fall and returning her gaze to his.

"You don't have to do it by yourself." Daryl said.

Carol raised both hands to push her hair off of her face in a weary gesture. Her eyes looked huge in her pale face, ice blue pools of uncertainty over dark half moons of exhaustion. It was hard to rest when he was gone; she'd let herself get used to his warmth, his body conforming to hers as they curled around each other in their sleep. She moved to the bed, perching lightly on the edge for a moment before scooting back up to lay her head on one of the mismatched pillow cases.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here." Daryl said, but wondering if it would've made any difference. He was glad they hadn't had to go through with taking over the place like they'd planned and thought that maybe now they really could start making this place safe, get it ready for whatever came next.

When Carol didn't respond he lay down beside her and took her in his arms, worried at how unyielding she was, her body stiff.

"You need to be out there. I know this is hard for you—being inside walls. This place." Carol told him.

"Ain't any easier for you." Daryl said simply, resting his cheek against her temple.

"It was easier out there, on the road." Carol sighed. "Simple problems, simple needs: food, water, shelter, to run or hide from the dead or kill them."

"We were dying out there." Daryl said, and they both thought of Bob, Beth, and Ty. "Better in here."

"We're still dying in here." Carol reminded him of the death toll in just the last few days, "Reg, Pete, Aiden, Noah...

"Doesn't mean it isn't better here." Daryl said stubbornly. "Doesn't mean we can't make it a home. Stop running. Ain't you tired of being somethin' you're not?"

"Rick said he was tired of lying. I told him he couldn't have it both ways—I let them see who I really am and then I'm one of the bad guys; they won't want me here." she insisted.

"They already know, Carol." Daryl told her, "Aaron knows most of it, and everyone else who sees us together is gonna be connectin' the dots, 'specially if you stop wearing this shit."

He pushed aside the high starched collar of her blouse and nuzzled into her neck.

"Stop—I can't think when you do that..." Carol protested, feeling her attempt to stay aloof from his appeal teeter on the edge.

"Always was your problem." Daryl murmured and then started kissing and licking at her neck, gentle but insistent, holding her still with one long fingered hand spread out on the other side of her head. His whiskers rasped against her soft skin, sending a goose bump thrill rushing straight to her core.

"Problem?" she asked, her voice going breathy, her body thawing.

"When to think, when to do—knowing the difference." he explained, his other hand deftly moving to undo the first button of her fussy blouse and continuing on down, opening her to him.

Anyone who thought Daryl Dixon didn't know how to read people was usually dead wrong. He knew this woman better than anyone; knew her heart, knew when she was hurting, knew why.

Daryl kissed down onto her pale freckled cleavage, reaching her melting point.

Carol stopped him, took his face in her hands, lifted it, staring into his eyes, blue on blue, looking for the truth.

"You're still one of the good guys, sweetheart." he breathed, watching her eyes mist over.

Carol nodded at him, believing him, and kissed him.

AN: Something that MMB said on TTD stuck with me. She discussed being initially worried that the things Carol is doing will be seen as her being evil "bad," but that Carol is actually "good bad." That provoked this chapter and her questioning her own actions.

In the advice she gave to Andrea and the threat she made to Merle about Daryl in the S3 deleted scene, the commonality of killing someone in their sleep with a knife always made me think she had planned that as a way to take out Ed, hence my little explanation about why she and Sophia were at the shelter. The way her threat to Pete played out was the same, this time reinforced with her trench knife.

In my version of the story the connection that Caryl has is vital to both of their mental states. In this chapter he helps her see that she is still "trying" and is a good person. He believes in her.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think if you have time.

PS: To anyone waiting on my other WIPs, (of which I really do have too many) I don't have much time for writing at the moment & this one is coming fast & easy, so it's all I'm updating at present. I haven't abandoned any (really!) but I can't devote the time necessary to them and get my RL work done & that pays the bills, so there you have it: the eternal struggle of a fan fic writer. School's out in 4 weeks & then I will get back to them. Thanks to those of you who care that they continue & have asked.