Hello! Time to see what Carol's been up to. Hope you like this chapter and thanks for reading!

Chapter Two

The clouds were low and angry, swollen with rain that didn't seem to want to fall just yet. Carol eyed them dismally, her eyes tired and grainy from lack of sleep. She hadn't wanted to settle in this place for any amount of time. She wanted to keep moving, knowing they were close to the group they were after, but getting caught in a storm was not on her to do list so she hadn't been keen on leaving just yet. It was harder to keep a watch out for walkers and the mud slowed her down; slowed them all down. She had people to look out for now so it wasn't like it was before, when she had first been banished from her home. Now she was responsible for others.

She didn't want to be. It had just happened. She had been on her own for a few months before she had stumbled upon any survivors. She hadn't been looking for any. All she had been doing was trying to survive as well as she could on her own. Then she met up with a small group of women. At first she had thought it odd that there had been no men but then she learned the story and had been disgusted.

A few of the women had been with their husbands after the outbreak, running for their lives like she had done herself before they settled at the prison. Apparently there were other groups out there that were ran by men even worse than Philip Blake. The husbands of these women had been killed and the women had been taken.

Carol didn't have to ask them what had happened to them while they had been held captive. She could see it in their eyes. But there had been a man in the group that had risked his own hide to save them. As far as they knew the man had helped seven of them escape. Those seven women were no longer the cowering frightened creatures that she had first encountered. And not all of the women that were with her now were escapees. A few she stumbled upon in different towns. One she met while her group were camping near the quarry where it had all began.

She had something in common with all these women. She hadn't been through the same thing they had exactly, but she had suffered at the hands of a man for many years and knew what it felt like to be dominated, degraded. To feel as though you're less than human. The other thing that she had in common with them was a simple thing. They didn't need men to survive this. Not at all. They were strong and they could do everything that a man could do. They didn't need nor did they want to be around men. She didn't really mind being around them personally, but the others, well, they were scared and she sympathized.

She wasn't afraid of men but she had no need for them either. Her husband had tormented her, the one man that she thought she actually had some kind of connection with left her without even a goodbye and another, that had been like a brother to her, forced her out of her home. Banished her from the people she loved.

No, she was finished with that. There was no reason in the world for any of them to pretend that they couldn't make it out here on there own. They had done just fine so far. She had done just fine completely alone before running into these women in the first place.

The rest of her group were settling into one of the buildings up the street. She had wanted to take one last walk through and search for signs of herds but there was nothing close as far as she could see. It had been a long time since the world had ended and even in a city as big as Atlanta, the food supply for the walkers would run out. Oh, there were still plenty, but this side of the city, where the buildings mostly consisted of warehouses and factories, there probably hadn't been too many people to feed on in the first place. Occasionally there would be a walker or two that needed to be dealt with but so far the small area that they were currently residing seemed to be bare.

"It's all clear for ten blocks in every direction. No walkers."

Carol's head snapped up, her eyes locking onto the woman's standing in front of her. Cassidy Sinclair had been beautiful. To Carol, she still was, despite the scars that marred one side of her face. Her eyes were dark and hard. She had been with the group of men the longest and had probably suffered the worst, but she never spoke much about her time with them. She hadn't been rescued by the man that had saved the others. She had escaped on her own after another man, the hero's own brother, had given her a knife and told her to run. The same night that the leader of the group had cut into her face out of sheer boredom, and possibly madness.

The woman fell into step with her, heading towards the boarded up building that had been abandoned long before any of them had ever even heard of a walker. "There's at least one man watching us. I didn't see any more than that."

Carol looked over sharply. "Could be more."

Cassidy only shrugged, her lips thinning out in a hard line. "Let's hope," she said, her voice stiff.

Carol was used to her gruffness. "Cas, you do know that not every man out there is out to hurt people."

The woman cut Carol a sardonic look. "Your optimism gets on my nerves, you know that?"

"I'm the Pollyanna to your Cassandra," Carol quipped. "We need balance in this group if any of us are ever going to survive."

Cassidy rolled her dark eyes, her brows pulling together but she couldn't keep the side of her mouth from turning up in a lopsided smile. "You make me sick."

Carol hummed and then Cas bumped her shoulder with her own but then let her smile fall. Carol felt the need to ease her friends mind. "I want four girls on the second floor, one at each window. Make sure they have plenty of ammo. We aren't ready to go after that group just yet. If those men show up, I want most of them cut down before they can even get within a block of this place. Send up our best shooters."

Cassidy nodded. "Are you forgetting that we're their best shooters?" She asked.

"Are you forgetting that we have been scouting for two days and neither of us have slept for the last thirty six hours? If we go up there we'll end up shooting at shadows and scaring the hell out of all of them."

"Wouldn't hurt if you ask me. They need a good scare. Some of the younger ones are getting too damn confident. They're forgetting that these people don't look at us like we're even human. If they find us then they won't let us get away again."

Carol followed her through the door. "Them being confident is a good thing. None of you were worth a damn when I found you. You were all either near comatose or ready to shoot down anyone you saw. They're okay now. And after we hunt down those men and get rid of them for good, they'll be even better."

Cassidy didn't reply. She was one of them that had been angry at the world for what had happened to her. Carol didn't blame her for it. She understood it, even though she hadn't been through what they had, it was still a pain that she thought she at least could relate to a little. "I wouldn't use the word better to explain them. Or myself," Cassidy said quietly before they parted ways.

They all had their own little niche. A place, although temporary, that they could call their own. There were fifteen of them total. The youngest was a girl of just sixteen. She didn't speak but she was a quick learner. She had been with them for a few months now. Carol and Cas had found her cowering in the basement of a house, half starved. She'd been terrified, sick and probably wouldn't have lasted for another week, but now she was at least healthier, even if she didn't speak. Carol didn't know if she'd been mute before or if it had happened sometime after the outbreak.

Carol trusted that Cassidy would instruct the girls to keep their ears open and their eyes peeled. Carol was ready to face plant her bedroll and get a solid eight hours of sleep for once. Maybe more, depending on whether catastrophe struck or not. She sat down heavily and went to work on the buckles of her boots, sighing when she was able to pull them off. Her feet ached, her back ached and her mind felt fractured from lack of sleep.

She sat there, staring at the strip of gray light that seeped into the room from the crack under the door. She had found the storeroom and called it as her own before anyone else could. She was no longer afraid of tight spaces. After you lost everything you ever loved, closed spaces didn't seem as scary as they used to.

She ran a hand through her hair before stretching out and pulling the blanket over her. It was cool in the building, a welcome reprieve from the heat of the Georgia summer. As tired as she was, it wasn't easy turning off her thoughts. She worried about the women that looked to her for guidance. The thought of her leading anyone was absurd to her, considering who she had been before, but they looked up to her and she felt a strong need to keep them safe.

She had killed for them already. She would kill for them again. This thought had her mind wondering back to the day that Rick had taken her on that run. The day he had told her that she was dangerous. That he didn't want her around his children. He had deemed her a threat to all of them.

And now that was exactly what she was. She had killed to protect the people that she loved. The people that she had thought of as family. It was because of those very children that she had done what she had done. But Rick hadn't seen it that way and that was okay. What was one more let down?

Of course her tired mind conjured up other disappointments in her life. Like the day Rick had returned without Daryl Dixon. How, briefly, the news that he had taken off with his brother had cut her. Despite her better judgment, she had loved the man. She had never admitted as much out loud but it had been the truth. She had trusted him and she had felt safe when he had been near. They had shared a different view of the world than the others in the group. They had always been the two on the outside and that alone could have drawn two people together.

But she understood why he had left. Despite the pain, she had never lost that deep respect she had for him. She still missed him. Out of everyone, it was him that haunted her and over time that love had turned bitter and brittle. It had splintered in her heart and when she thought of him now, the memories of him, even the very best ones, were shaded at the edges with something hard and hollow. How she could grieve over the loss of a love that was completely one sided was beyond her, but she did.

He was a good man. It took her a while to convince him of the fact, but it was true. What would he think of her now? What would he say if he knew what she was really capable of? She wasn't the same person she had been when he had left. She was a new woman. A colder woman.

Sometimes she wondered if their paths would ever cross again and if they did, would he still be the same? Would he be disgusted that she wasn't the woman he had left? Would he have regrets that he had ever saved her?

The last thing she thought of as exhaustion finally pulled her under was the soft look in his eyes the day he had came to her cell after finding her in the tombs. He hadn't gotten close. He had stayed in the doorway, but when she had met his eyes she had thought that maybe there was a little love behind the small smile. That maybe, just maybe, something could finally change between them.

Thankfully sleep pulled her the rest of the way under before she could drown in regret but it wouldn't do anything to steady her troubled thoughts. She would dream about him standing in that doorway, arms crossed and eyes narrowed as he accused her of being a killer.