Daryl wasn't even sure that he liked meatloaf. He really couldn't remember having had it before, and it wouldn't surprise him any if he never had. His mother had never exactly been any kind of four star cook or anything. Before she died she seemed to consider it fixing dinner if she managed to put the cereal box on the counter where he could reach it before she passed out from out drinking too much wine. Daryl had eaten more toaster waffles in his life than he cared to admit.

Still, when Andrea had asked him what he wanted for dinner, he'd blurted out meatloaf without even really being sure what the hell it was. It's what all the families on television were eating all the damn time. Every time he saw some of those fictional families inviting someone over for dinner it seemed that they always served meatloaf. He'd reasoned that it must be very good since all those women seemed to know their way around the kitchen, and they were always making it.

Andrea had raised her eyebrows at him a little when he'd offered up the suggestion, but moments later she'd shrugged and told him he was going to have to go shopping if that's what he wanted for dinner. Daryl didn't mind it so much. He was going to have to go shopping no matter what they had because they'd nearly eaten their way through all the groceries that they had around the apartment.

So now he was at the A and P with the list that Andrea had given him. He'd easily found most everything on the list, including a special pan that she needed and had instructed him to get in this small aisle where they had crammed about three of everything Daryl imagined any kitchen could need. There were just a few things left to pick up, but one of them had Daryl stumped. He had no idea what he was looking for and he'd circled the store at least two times hoping that the item would magically jump from the list and fall in front of his face.

As Daryl pushed his cart down the refrigerated aisle to get the eggs Andrea had requested, he studied the list again and tried to make out what the hell the mystery item could be. It was written carefully in the section she'd dedicated to his meatloaf so he didn't want to go back without it. His meatloaf might not be as good as it was on television if he couldn't find it.

If Daryl had been paying attention, then he probably wouldn't have run into someone's cart with enough force to cause a crash that was likely audible throughout the small grocery store. When the crash occurred and Daryl's cart came to an abrupt stop, his vision jerked up from the list.

He wasn't expecting it to settle on Carol, though. It had been her cart that he'd treated like the opposition in a demolition derby. She was smiling at him, still clutching the handle bar of the cart.

"You win," she said.

Daryl nervously smiled at her.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shoulda been payin' attention."

Carol snickered a little and he backed up, pulling his cart away from hers. She pushed hers forward just a bit and plucked something out of the section next to him.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Daryl said, backing up a little more to give her room.

"Daryl, watch out, there's someone behind you," Carol said softly, smiling again. Daryl glanced over his shoulder at a very short, very old woman who was pushing her cart away from him and glaring at him through her glasses. The lens on the glasses were so thick that they magnified her eyes, and for a moment Daryl felt like he was being silently scolded for his clumsiness by an ancient owl buying butter sticks in the A and P.

Daryl turned around nervously again and snickered.

"It's like a damn traffic jam in here," he said.

"It can get that way," Carol said. "Making dinner?" She asked, glancing into his cart.

"Andrea is," Daryl said. "I been tryin' ta figure out what the hell she's got written down here, but either I can't read or she can't write, and I reckon it could be a combination a' both."

"Let me see," Carol said. She left the front of her cart and walked over to Daryl, leaning around him and looking closely at the list. Daryl was distracted for a minute. He'd never been quite this close to her and she smelled wonderful. Clean and flowery. He wanted to smell her hair, but he knew that she'd notice if he did that and was likely to think he was some kind of freak if he told her that she smelled good and he'd just wanted to sniff her. "Where is it?" She asked, drawing him out of his thoughts.

Daryl cleared his throat a little and pointed at the list. Carol wrapped her hand around his and pulled the list closer to her to make out the chicken scratch that was Andrea's handwriting. Carol's hands were soft and cool closed around his.

She giggled a little.

"Meatloaf?" She asked.

"Yeah," Daryl said.

"How traditional!" Carol said.

Daryl felt his cheeks burn. He didn't know why it embarrassed him, but it did. He wondered if she was making fun of their dinner selection, and he felt a little ashamed to know that he'd been the one to suggest it. Maybe meatloaf was a bad thing. Carol didn't seem to notice his embarrassment, though.

"The problem with your list," Carol said, "is that it's written just as much in brand names as it is in items." She looked up at Daryl then he looked at her, their faces only inches apart. She was smirking at him, but he tried to draw his eyes away from her mouth and look squarely at her eyes.

"What'cha mean?" He asked.

"Well, for paper towels she didn't write 'paper towels', she wrote the brand name. Same thing for coffee…" Carol said. She glanced into his cart and moved away from him a little then. "Looks like you followed all that fine, though," she said. She shrugged at him. "All you're missing is the bread crumbs. That's your big mystery item."

Daryl balled the list up in his hand and shoved it in his front pocket.

"Thanks," he said. He was unsure of what else to say and he was a little embarrassed both over what was obviously a failure on Andrea's part to make a proper list and over the fact that he hadn't known that what she'd scribbled down was some kind of bread crumb.

"No problem," Carol said. "Think you can find it now?"

Daryl had no idea if he could or he couldn't, but he wanted to escape from where he was.

"Yeah, I just couldn't make out the handwriting," he said, trying to excuse himself. He quickly whipped his cart to the side, attempting to move out of her way and to escape from the gaze she held him locked in. He almost hit an old man shuffling by and the man grumbled something at him as he squeaked out an apology. He heard Carol giggle, but he didn't look back at her. He pushed his cart forward and attempted to disappear as quickly as possible.

"Daryl!" He heard Carol call. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. She was standing back at her cart now.

"Yeah?" He asked.

"I didn't see potatoes on your list," Carol said. "If you don't have any at home, you might want to pick some up. Everyone knows that meatloaf goes best with mashed potatoes."

Daryl nodded slightly at her and continued onward in search of breadcrumbs and now potatoes. He didn't know what the hell you were supposed to eat meatloaf with, and now he wondered if Andrea even knew what the hell she was doing since she apparently hadn't known that meatloaf goes best with mashed potatoes.

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Daryl paid for his groceries and pushed the cart out through the parking lot. He saw the owl woman again pushing a cart a few cars away from him and he decided he might as well make it up to her for having nearly run her over. He left his own cart for a moment and walked over, offering to help her load her groceries.

The tiny woman peered at him through her giant glasses and narrowed her little owl eyes before nodding and thanking him in a thick accent that was heavy laden with quivering sound that Daryl thought all old people made when they talked.

Daryl put the few bags of groceries into the old woman's car and nodded at her as he pushed her buggy toward one of the cart returns. The old woman thanked him and offered him a dollar, but he just smiled at her and waved his hand at her. He liked old people like that. He always tried to imagine what it would have been like to have grandparents and have a couple of little old people like the ones he saw around to call his own in some way. If he'd had a grandmother, he would have loaded her groceries in the car for her, but since he didn't, he could at least do it for the tiny owl.

Daryl returned her buggy and went to finish loading the last of his own food in the back of his truck. He pushed the buggy into the rack with the others and got in the truck, starting in the direction of the apartments.

He drove along the streets of Sweet Junction at a snail's pace, much like the other residents, looking around at the store fronts as though there were anything there that he didn't already consider run of the mill.

And then something got his attention. The first thing he noticed was stuff strewn across the sidewalk, and he slowed his truck momentarily from the crawl it was at to an even slower crawl. He heard, then, a sharp noise and realized that just up ahead there was a car parked into a spot beside the sidewalk and a man was standing out by it…a man that Daryl quickly identified as Ed Peletier. He wasn't alone, though, and he appeared to be trying to shove someone into the car. Daryl didn't have to even think for a moment to imagine who it was.

Daryl stopped the truck right where it was, momentarily appalled that no one in the area seemed to be coming out to see what was going on or stopping their car to offer any assistance at all in the situation. He opened the door of the truck and left it running in the street. If the fuckers of Sweet Junction wouldn't stop because Ed Peletier had the balls to try and beat his wife in broad daylight in the middle of the town, then they'd at least fucking stop because Daryl Dixon had made sure to angle his truck into both lanes and leave it running.

Daryl got out of the truck and made his way directly to the car where Ed was fighting with Carol. He could feel his blood boiling and by the time he'd closed the short distance he'd already come to terms with the fact that he was going to jail, whether or not they could pay bail.

"Get your fuckin' hands off her!" He growled as he came up. Ed stopped what he was doing momentarily and looked at Daryl, shocked. The asshole had obviously not been called out on his shit regularly.

"Get the fuck outta here," Ed growled back. Daryl glanced at Carol. He couldn't see much of her face because her hair was in it, but he could see enough to see that there was blood. One of Ed's hands was wrapped firmly around her throat, and the other had her by the arm.

"I said get your fuckin' hands off her," Daryl warned again. Ed smiled at him. Daryl decided that if snakes could smile, he was looking dead into the grin of a snake.

"Why don't you go on home, boy?" Ed asked. "I'm trying to talk to my wife here and it ain't no business of yours."

"I'm makin' it my business," Daryl said.

"We're just talking," Ed said, "it ain't got nothing to do with you." He shoved Carol forward again and she made a choking noise that made the hair on the back of Daryl's neck stand up. Daryl glanced around and noticed that there was one or two people who were pretending not to be paying them any attention.

"If that's what the hell ya call talkin'," Daryl said, "then I reckon you an' me's 'bout ta have a talk. I done told ya twice ta get'cha hands off her an' if I gotta tell ya again then I'm gonna do it speakin' your language 'cause I don't reckon ya can understand me."

"Daryl, go home…" Carol said.

"You better listen to her, boy," Ed said, smiling again. "She knows we just having a little chat here. You ever get you a set a balls big enough to find you a woman, and you'll understand they can get a little outta hand at times."

Daryl grabbed the man then, balling his fists up in his shirt. Anger washed over him and he threw his weight against him. Somehow they ended up on the ground, and Daryl wasn't entirely sure for a few moments that Carol hadn't gone down with them in the initial fall. He didn't care that they were in the middle of the street and he didn't care if God and the whole police force of the state of Georgia was watching. His main goal at the moment was to break Ed Peletier's skull open using the hot, black pavement that the city council had so graciously provided him.

"I'm…gonna…call…the…fuckin'…cops," Ed struggled to say as they rolled around fighting.

Daryl was so pissed that he couldn't keep track of the punches that he was throwing. He knew that he was receiving a few of his own, but for the most part he felt like Ed was spending his time trying to deflect the ones that he was throwing. The good citizens of the town, the same ones that hadn't called the police to report the fact that Ed would lay his hands on Carol in front of them, apparently didn't seem moved to save Ed either, nor to call the law.

"I want'cha ta fuckin' call 'em!" Daryl yelled, punching Ed in the face again. "Make sure they fuckin' get here ta see what'cha done, what'cha was gonna do!"

Somewhere in the back of his mind Daryl could hear Carol screaming. He wasn't sure if she was screaming at him, screaming at Ed, or screaming for someone to help, but she was screaming. If anything, the sound of her screaming just spurred Daryl on. He imagined all the damn times she'd probably screamed like that because of the asshole pinned under him, and he just wanted to hit him harder.

Daryl didn't know if they'd fought for minutes or for hours. His muscles were tired, but he wasn't going to stop until he had to. He felt, finally, tugging on the back of his arms and he gave into his tired muscles, allowing whoever was pulling on him to heave him to his feet. He didn't cast another look at Ed, he simply turned a little expecting to see that shithead Shane Walsh waiting to take him away in cuffs.

Who he saw, though, wasn't one of the cops. It was a black man that he hadn't seen before. The man looked at him with his brow furrowed and Daryl realized he'd been punched in the eye at least once because his vision in his left eye was a little blurry and he could feel it watering.

"Easy, man," the man said. "You trying to kill the man?"

Daryl nodded at the man defiantly.

"I was aimin' to," Daryl said. He became aware then of the sound of car cranking and he turned his head to see Ed pulling his car out of the parking spot that it was in and snaking around Daryl's truck and into the other lane of the road, cutting someone off who was also trying to get around Daryl's roadblock and being repaid with the sharp honking of a horn. And now Daryl was standing in the middle of the road, his truck idling in one lane with the nose barely in the other, and there were people slowly gathering around, though everyone gawked more than anything. "Carol…" Daryl said, starting to look for her.

Carol was standing on the sidewalk, her hands over her face. Daryl pulled himself loose from the man that was holding him and walked over to her. He didn't know what made him do it, but he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. The action had been almost involuntary. The man walked over and stood awkwardly near them.

"Look, I don't know what just happened here, but maybe you ought to try to work this out a different way," the man said. "Maybe go home and cool down or something."

Daryl realized he couldn't talk. He didn't know what to say. As things were obviously calming down, people began walking again, the small crowd disappearing as quickly and silently as it had come.

Daryl pushed Carol away from him gently and grabbed her arms to pull her hands away from her face. She hissed and he realized that he had perhaps hit a tender spot.

"I'm sorry," he said. Without thinking he put his hands on either side of her head and tipped her face up, looking directly into her eyes for a second. She had obviously been crying, and sobs were still catching in her throat. Her lip was bleeding, as was her nose a bit, and her eye was starting to swell a little. Ed had gotten there before he had, that much was certain.

The man reappeared a moment later with a few shopping bags in his hands and some items tucked in his arms.

"These yours?" He asked. Daryl nodded at him.

"Can ya put it in the back a' the truck?" Daryl asked. The man nodded at him. Daryl turned back to Carol. "I know ya don't want ta ride with me, but'cha gonna right now. We got ta go an' take care a' this."

Carol's eyes danced a little and Daryl could see she was starting to cry again.

"Where are we going?" She asked. Daryl started around the truck, ignoring any of the cars that were trying to squeeze by him. One car honked a horn at them and Daryl shot them the finger.

"We're goin' ta the police station," Daryl said. "We're gonna fuckin' turn in Ed Peletier and hope his fuckin' ass ends up in jail."

"Daryl, you could get arrested for this!" Carol protested as Daryl opened the truck door and pushed her toward it.

"Fine with me," he said. "It'll give me the chance ta kick his sorry ass again if they dumb enough ta put us in the same damn cell. I weren't done no way."

Carol seemed to protest a moment longer and Daryl pushed at her shoulder, urging her into the truck. She finally got in and he closed the door, walking slowly around the front of the truck. As he came around the other side, the man was standing there.

"Do you need some help? I don't know what just happened, but I can call someone…" the man said. He still looked concerned, and Daryl imagined that anyone with an ounce of decency might have been concerned if they'd witnessed the scene.

Daryl clapped him on the shoulder.

"I think we're good," Daryl said. "She's got a shit for brains ex-husband an' I'm takin' her ta the police now ta turn him in for breakin' court orders. Ain't nothin' else ta see."

The man nodded his head and stood in front of Daryl for a second longer before relaxing his shoulders a little.

"Alright, man," the man said. "Good luck to you."

Daryl watched as the man walked off. He shot the finger at another car that decided to loudly protest his impromptu road block and walked to the truck door, climbing in. He closed the truck door and put the truck out of park, fishing out a cigarette and lighting it quickly.

"Really," Carol said, "you don't have to do this. Ed won't turn you into the cops because he doesn't want anyone telling them what happened here. You don't have to get into trouble over this…over me…"

"Stop beggin' an' shit," Daryl said. "Don't look good on ya. We're goin' ta talk ta the fuckin' cops an' that's all there is to it. If they lock me up, they lock me up," he said, taking a long drag off his cigarette and flicking some of the ash out the window. "Won't be the first damn time I been locked up, an' at least this is some shit I won't mind havin' linked ta my name."

"Why did you do that?" Carol asked. "You could have kept going, just like everybody else."

Daryl turned the truck onto one of the other roads, heading in the direction of the police department, before he answered.

"I did it 'cause it needed ta be done," Daryl said, "an' 'cause everybody else was just keepin' goin'."

Daryl liked to think that he'd have done the same thing for any woman in her position, and he likely would have broken up the disturbance for anyone he'd seen in a similar situation, but he kept it to himself that he was beginning to wonder if he'd have felt exactly the same way if it had been anyone else. He'd seen a lot of men lay their hands on women in his life, and it always pissed him off to some degree, but he'd always responded by simply wanting to push the man around enough to get him to lose interest in bullying the woman he was roughing up. Today had been different. Today he hadn't just wanted Ed to leave her alone. He knew that he wouldn't have walked off, satisfied, if Ed had simply stopped what he was doing and let her go in peace. Seeing Ed with his hands on her like that had done something entirely different to Daryl. It had actually made him want to beat Ed with everything he had in him and then borrow some from someone else to continue beating him. It wasn't a feeling that Daryl understood entirely, and he wasn't positive that he was completely comfortable with it. He certainly wasn't comfortable admitting it to Carol.