Chapter Sixteen

Carol tensed as her eyes stayed locked on Cassidy's. She had expected this reaction from her. The woman was a force to be reckoned with. She was strong, she was just as lethal as Carol, and she had a real problem controlling her anger. She was fiercely opinionated and she didn't have a lot in the way of a filter.

"You can't be serious about this. Are you forgetting everything you've been through since they forced you out of that place? The things you've had to do to survive?" The woman's eyes flashed dangerously.

"It's over. We had a score to settle and last night, it was settled. I won't have this group on the run forever. What the hell kind of life is that? There's a chance they'll let us in. Enough time's past and-"

"You aren't thinking!" Cassidy barked.

Carol raised her chin. Her and Cassidy had been through a lot together and the woman was her friend, but sometimes Carol wanted to slap some sense into her. If she thought it would do any good she'd do just that. "I'm thinking. I'm thinking long term. I'm thinking about a life that-"

"Behind the walls of prison, with people that would see one of their own thrown out because they're too damn weak to stand up to some half mad dictator! You want our whole group to spend the rest of our days under the thumb of a psycho path!"

Carol took a deep even breath and let it out slowly. There was a time when her patience was one of her greatest virtues. She needed it at the moment. After counting silently in her head she met her friend's angry eyes once more. "I'm not forcing you to agree with me. I'm not forcing you to understand where I'm coming from, and I am certainly not forcing anyone to follow me that doesn't want to. I only brought it up as an option for the rest of you. That doesn't mean you have to take me up on that offer, but I'm going back. And maybe I won't even want to go inside once I get there. There's people that I left that I still care about, children for Christ's sakes, and I at least want to make sure they're alive."

"We're suppose to be your family," Cassidy ground the words out from between clenched teeth. "And you'd rather go back to a group that tore you away from everything."

Carol nodded. "You are. But that doesn't mean I have to keep running like this if there's more out there. I want you all to come with me. I want to find us something more than this life! It's out there. I know it is. It may not be the prison but it's somewhere."

Carol knew that she was breaking through the woman's defenses little by little. She wanted her to understand that Carol only wanted a better life for all of them. Not just herself.

"You sure this doesn't have something to do with your wild and crazy night with the ex?"

Carol scowled. "He isn't my ex and you know it."

Cassidy crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes still hard. "If one of those girl's gets hurt because of this..."

"Then that's on me. But I'm not worried about that and you know, deep down, you're only giving me shit because you want to."

"I want what's best for this group," she snapped.

Carol nodded. "I believe that. But I also believe that you're role here is the bitch with the chip on her shoulder. The one that has to pull up an argument no matter what we do. It's getting old Cass. If you're going then lets pack up so we can head out. We're walking out of the city. I don't trust any of these vehicles." She turned her back then, storming towards the door, silently hoping that Cassidy and the rest of the women would follow her, but knowing it wouldn't matter if they didn't. It was time to go. It was time to find a life for them out there.

~H~

Daryl knew they were close. Even if he hadn't been able to recognize the landmarks for what they were, he would still know they were close He would have been able to tell by the tension radiating from the woman that he was walking next to. It was weird, him and Merle traveling with a group of thirteen females but Merle seemed right at home surrounded by them. Go figure.

"What the fuck is your plan now. Another half mile and we're there. We goin' in or are you just gonna take a look?"

She shook her head. "I don't know yet."

He hadn't touched her as they made their way towards the only real home she had known since the world ended. Sometimes his shoulder would brush against hers as they walked but that was it. But she was there and that's all that mattered. He was finished fighting his demons. He was finished trying to talk himself out of letting his guard down. She had her own battles but he trusted that her internal fight with herself over him, was over. There wasn't anything to block it anymore. The walls were down.

He kept telling himself that he deserved this. She deserved this. They had both been through a whole lot of hell to get to where they were. They had faced a lot of heartache along the way but had came out stronger in the end because in the end, they had found one another and maybe they were even better for the time apart. And now she was about to face another hurdle and he was strangely calm about it. Or he thought he was until his mind started turning the situation over in his mind again.

She was ready for this.

He wasn't so sure if he was ready for this, though. Maybe if he hadn't left with Merle, he would be able to conjure up an excuse for why his old friend would have thrown a woman, this woman, his fucking woman, right out on her ass without a backwards glance. Daryl never would have agreed to throwing her out, of course, but maybe he could at least try to see Rick's side a little more clearly. He had trusted Rick. The man had done right by him as far as Daryl was concerned and had Daryl stayed back then instead of going off with his brother, maybe his friendship with Rick would have been more solid.

But he hadn't stayed. He had taken off, secure in the fact that Rick was competent enough not to lose his head completely and put the one person he cared about the most in jeopardy. Because she could have died out there. She probably should have, considering all the obstacles that had been piled in her way.

So, as far as he was concerned, Rick Grimes was no friend of his. He held not one ounce of loyalty to the man, and if Merle wanted to kill him straight away, then Daryl would step aside and let it happen. In his eyes, Rick was no better than the scum they had killed the night before. Maybe he wasn't as brutal, but Carol's blood, well, Rick's hands would have been covered in it had she ended up dying out there.

And the rest of them? Well, every goddamn one of them could go straight to hell as far as he was concerned. They hadn't even bothered to go find her. They had silently accepted what Rick had done. They had likely agreed with him that she was a threat to them and the kids there. They were sheep that needed to be led and they had sat back and done nothing when the Shepherd had pretty much led one of them off to slaughter.

"Can the rest of you hold back for a few minutes?" She asked, suddenly turning to face the rest of her group.

Merle and Cassidy shared a look, which made Daryl groan inwardly. The last thing they needed was for the most volatile woman in Carol's group to team up with Merle fucking Dixon. That was a recipe for disaster for sure. Finally they both were staring straight at him and then their eyes flicked to Carol in unison. "Watch your asses," Cassidy said in a clipped tone.

Carol gave them a stiff nod and then turned, grabbing his hand and leading him towards the tree line. If they cut straight through the woods from here then they would get there a little bit faster. By the time they were halfway to the clearing that would lead them straight to the fence, his hand was sweating in hers.

"I don't think I can do this," he said suddenly, unable to push that anger down. It was cloying in his stomach, making him feel sick. He didn't trust himself coming face to face with that man.

She turned questioning eyes on him and then her expression cleared, the corner of her mouth turned up slightly. "If I can then surely-"

"What he did-"

"Was what he did," she said firmly, turning so she was facing him fully. Her hand went to his chest and he knew she'd be able to detect the anxious throb of his heartbeat under her palm. "I'm trying," she said, keeping her voice calm. "I'm trying to let all this go. I've hated him for a long time but I hated you to. Hell, if I'm being honest with myself right now, I hated you more."

His pulse quickened at the bluntness of her words, because inside they weren't blunt at all. They were sharp and they twisted in his gut.

"But I let it go. It was like a darkness in my mind and it hurt. It hurt to feel like that towards you and it hurts to feel like that towards the rest of them. I don't want it anymore because it isn't me. I want to be me again."

He held her gaze, trying to understand her need to make things right with them. Knowing that he needed to understand it. But it wasn't something he could grasp onto. It was like an eel, slippery and dangerous. "What I did ain't the same as what he did. I fucked up and broke you, but I still thought you were safe there. That son of a bitch, in his own mind, murdered you. He couldn't have really thought you'd make it out there and that didn't matter. What mattered was-"

"I know. But if I let that hang onto me then I'm no better than he is. I want him to look me in the eye. I want him to see that I didn't just survive out there. I want him to see the people I saved and I want him to know that no one, not him and not you, could really break me. Not completely. Maybe you won't ever understand but I need this. I need to see him."

He let out a breath and then nodded. "So you've made up your mind about going inside? If that's even an option."

"I have."

"And if he don't let you in?" He asked.

She stepped back and gripped his hand again. "Then I'll know that I at least tried and the rest of us will just move on to something else."

"That easy, huh?" He asked, keeping his pace as slow as hers. He knew that she was still scared to death of what this would bring. He'd be a liar if he said that they'd welcome her back with open arms. They wouldn't do that. Rick wouldn't do that, anyway.

Turns out, that wasn't even something he should have concerned himself with. When they broke through the trees they both stumbled to a stop, their eyes sweeping over the prison, or what was left of it. Their was destruction everywhere. The fences were flattened. There were bodies, long dead by the smell of it, and there were walkers. Not enough to cause him to think they were in immediate danger, but enough to let them know they were there. Their slow movements told both of them that there wasn't any life left in this place. There was no scent of the living hanging on the air, stirring the walkers into a frenzy.

"Jesus," he muttered, his eyes unable to look away from the wreckage that had once been his home. "Somebody came and just slaughtered them." A chill ran up his spine then. All this time he had told himself that Rick had thrown her out like garbage, when in reality, without even knowing it at the time, he had spared her life.

And this is what he would have found if he hadn't ran into her in the city. He would have came here and he would have been looking out at this destruction and he would think that all hope was gone. That she was lost forever and that was something that had his gorge rising.

"Who?" She whispered, her voice barely audible. "Who could have done this?"

He shook his head and then suddenly she turned into him, her forehead hitting his chest as her arms went around him. He couldn't look away from the prison. Not until he felt a shudder run through her. He looked down, his hands instinctively running up and down her back. He wasn't really able to process what this meant. How the hell could this happen here?

"Judith, Carl... they're..." she couldn't finish. Her voice was tortured like she had to rip the words from her throat.

He flinched, memories of the day the baby girl had been born. Remembering running off to get her formula because her mama was a stain on the concrete and her daddy was a raving lunatic. He'd given her her first damn bottle for Christ's sake.

He pulled her back towards the trees, not wanting the walkers in the yard to catch their scent. He had no idea what the plan was now but there was no repairing the prison. There didn't seem to be any chance that any of them would have survived that.