"Life is at its best when everything has fallen out of place, and you decide that you're going to fight to get them right,

not when everything is going your way and everyone is praising you."

-Thisuri Wanniarachchi

After I fell and hit the ground, I was a bit disorientated and my ears were slightly ringing. I looked around me and noticed Rick and Daryl had fallen down as well and were on the ground now, while Glenn still was over the edge of the trough, on his knees.

Gareth was the first to react, he stood up quickly. His face only showed panic and disconcert, the other two men also looked pretty scared, especially the one who had slitted the throat of those four men. Gareth turned to look from them to me. I was on my left side, on the floor. As soon as he stopped looking at me, though, I grabbed my blade with two of my fingers and started cutting my ties around my wrists, as I did I found out that it seemed way easier in my head.

"You stay here!" Gareth ordered the guys that had killed the four other men.

"Gareth, these guys aren't going anywhere!" one of them exclaimed.

"Stay here until I know what's happening!" Gareth ordered them before he ran out of the room and silently I cursed. If only he would have allowed them to go with him and leave us alone in here.

"So we just sit here?"

"Got a job to do," the man with the baseball bat told the other man.

I kept moving the blade up and down, rubbing it against the ties, I almost got it. Right now I didn't even care if those two men noticed what I was doing. They were too preoccupied with what was going on outside to notice me, though.

"You there, Gareth?" one of them talked through the walkie-talkie.

"He's busy."

"You smell the smoke? You hear the shots? He could be dead! The hell we doing here? The whole place could be going up!"

That man was really losing his shit, but on the bright side, none of them were even looking at any of us, and they hadn't returned to do their 'job', which would be killing Glenn first and then Daryl. One of them had started to pace around the room and the other followed him, trying to calm him down.

I smiled and sighed out of relief as I finally managed to cut the ties. I sat up, still with my hands behind my back so they wouldn't see I had broken free. Slowly, I moved my feet close to my hands so I could also cut those ties as well.

"You went on one roundup and you blew protocol. We don't deal with security. That ain't our job. This is."

One of the men walked away from the other angrily, wanting to go out there and help their people, while the other knew his place and wanted to wait for the others to fix the problem. I took the chance to stand up slowly so they wouldn't focus on me until I wanted them to.

"Hey, look at me!"

As the man was turning around, I grabbed the blade firmly in my hand and without a second thought I threw it at the man who wanted to go out and help, I wanted to hit him in the face, around the eye area but I ended up hitting him in the neck. As I saw him starting bleeding, I realized that small blade could make more damaged than I imagined it would do. Out of pure luck, I hit and cut his jugular artery, making lots of blood to pour out of his neck. I turned to look at the other man, he stared in shock at his dying friend, I guess that's another man on my killing list, then he turned to look at me with such hatred I was scared of him. I guess that if we don't manage to escape I won't be able to convince Gareth to keep me alive a second time.

The man took a single step towards me, raising the baseball bat, ready to hit me with it when Rick stood up from behind the man and stabbed him in the neck with a hand-made wooden stake. Rick made sure the man was dead before he ran to Glenn to free him.

I ran to the man, grabbed my little blade that was right next to him on the floor, under a large puddle of bright red blood, I cleaned it with my shirt as I ran to Daryl. I knelt behind him and cut the ties around his hands first and then the one around his feet, once his hands were free he removed the rag around his mouth. Glenn was already up while Rick helped Bob.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I kept repeating as I cut Daryl's ties. I was apologizing for almost failing to save them.

Daryl stood quickly and then grabbed me by my elbows and quickly helped me up to my feet, saying nothing to me, then all of us walked to a table, there were several knives in there. This blade had proved to be useful but who knew what was out there, so I grabbed one of the biggest knives in here.

From outside I could hear several gunshots from different parts of this place, some were close to us, some not so much and others were barely audible. I also heard several people screaming, men and women and the distinctive snarling of walkers. Apparently the explosion had brought some part of this place down and let the walkers in.

That was a distraction, giving us time to escape but I wasn't sure if I should be too glad about this kind of distraction. From what I was hearing, I could tell there were many walkers out of here and that could be as dangerous to them as to us, or even more to us because we didn't have our guns, or in Daryl's case, his crossbow.

"If they got problems, we got a chance," Rick told us.

"It sounded like a bomb," Glenn said.

"Sounds like a damn war," Daryl said.

"But who would bomb them?" I asked.

"Maybe someone who knows what they really do," Glenn told me.

"What the hell are these people?" Bob hysterically asked.

"They ain't people," Daryl replied.

Bob had also grabbed a knife and was going to stab the man Rick killed in the head when Rick stopped him. "Don't," he exclaimed quickly. "Let him turn."

We jogged out of that room and got inside another, separated with a fenced-door. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what was inside, I unconsciously gasped as I covered my mouth with my hands. The sight in front of me was horrible and traumatizing. There were human torsos hanging from the ceiling. The other parts of the bodies, like the arms, legs, heads, were nowhere in sight. There were also like one hundred more knives in here. This whole place was so spooky and terrifying, it kind of reminded me of the 'Deer Cooler' Andrea, Michonne and I stayed for a while before finding Rick, Carl, Daryl and the others again at the prison, that was before Woodbury, except there weren't corpses anymore in there, and even if they were, at least they wouldn't be human remains.

"Cross any of these people, you kill them," Rick told us. "Don't hesitate. They won't."

I decided it would be a good idea to grab a second or even a third knife, I put the the first I found between the waistband of my jeans and grabbed two more. The others grabbed more knives as well and Daryl also got some kind of metal stick. After he did so, he softly put his hand on my lower back and pushed me forward.

The other door of this room led outside, we could perfectly hear a man asking for help from here. We looked out and saw several walkers had invaded the place. Some of them were around a red container, the man inside of it was the one asking for help and attracting more to him.

"If we run, we can get by them," Rick told us. "They're distracted."

"We got to let those people out," Glenn said, Rick just looked at him like he had lost his mind. Our people were the priority here and we could die trying to save more people. "That's still who we are. It's got to be."

Apparently, Glenn convinced Rick, who nodded at the Korean guy. Rick opened the door and the first to run out was Daryl, followed by Bob, then me, Rick and finally Glenn.

The walkers had noticed us now. I ran towards one and cut its head off with this very long knife I got. I moved to a second one and stabbed it in its skull. I turned around, looking for more walkers to kill when I realized the others had already dealt with the others around us. Glenn ran to the container, cut the chain and opened the doors. Out of it came a man in his thirties, probably, and he had completely lost his mind. He had long hair and a long beard, who knows how long he had been locked in there.

"We're the same! We're them!" he yelled as he grabbed Glenn by his shoulders, then he moved to Rick.

"Back off!"

"We're the same."

Rick pushed him off of him and the man just laughed as he looked at us with a crazy look on his eyes. I hadn't noticed but Daryl had gotten right next to me again, I really hated it when Daryl got overprotective, which doesn't happen often, thankfully.

Out of nowhere came a walker and ambushed the crazy man, biting him on his shoulder. Glenn moved to hit the walker with the baseball bat he had grabbed, as Rick, Bob and I stayed back. Daryl approached Glenn and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, pulling him back, behind the container, hiding him from several more walkers that were passing by. We were trapped, there were just too many of them and we were only five.

"We got to double back," Bob exclaimed.

"We can't!" I exclaimed, getting angry that he was thinking about abandoning the others, what a coward.

"A is that way," Rick told him. "We go back, we don't know where we are."

"We don't really have a choice, do we?" Daryl exclaimed as he kept looking at the walkers that were passing behind the other side of the container.

Right then we heard gunshots, many of them, and just second later we saw the walkers getting killed. It could only be the people from Terminus.

"Wait here," Rick told us as he ran to a car that was only feet away from us, he hid behind it.

"Rick. Rick!" Bob shouted.

"Shut up, you idiot!" I exclaimed, turning to look at Bob, if he kept screaming we could be found and maybe killed and most likely he would attract every walker if he kept shouting like this.

I was going after Rick to help him, when Daryl grabbed my wrist, turned me around and shook his head at me as he looked right at my eyes with a dead serious look. He told me to stay with Glenn and even asked Glenn to keep an eye on me, I knew this wasn't the time to argue so I didn't say anything and let him go after Rick instead of me. From my position I could see around ten or twelve people with big rifles, killing the walkers.

Rick spotted the last man of the group, ran to him, ambushed him, and took the rifle from him very quickly. Then he moved on to shoot the other people of that group, if he didn't kill them, the walkers made sure to do that, kneeling next to the wounded and started to feed on them.

I carefully ran to them after Rick shot them and approached the closest person to me, despite Daryl's protests. I grabbed a woman's gun quickly just before a walker got me. I kicked the walker away and walked towards Rick and Daryl. The three of us ran back to Glenn and Bob, in the process Daryl had grabbed me by my elbow and pulled me along with him.

"Stay close to me," Daryl exclaimed firmly as he looked right into my eyes, making me feel like I was just a five-year-old getting scolded. "Don't try to do something so stupid again."

"I needed the gun!" I argued.

"That walker almost bit your arm!" he yelled at me.

"I got it under control!"

"Come on!" Rick exclaimed loudly, making Daryl and I stop our argument.

Rick was on the lead and the four of us followed him. Daryl made sure to always be behind me or next to me so I would always be on his sight range. Daryl perfectly knew I could take care of myself, I had showed him countless times that I'm not some kind of damsel in distress, in need of her knight in shining armour. I accept I'm reckless sometimes and do things without really thinking it through, like killing that man of Joe's group back at that house, but probably if I weren't that impulsive I wouldn't be alive anymore.

A wasn't really that far but with so many walkers it got several times more complicated. We had to stop every five seconds or so to kill walkers. There were hundreds of them.

As we were stuck once again, I noticed Daryl struggling with two walkers at the same time, a third was approaching him from behind. I ran to it, past Daryl and pushed the walker to the ground, stabbing it quickly afterwards. By then Daryl had already killed the other two. I knew he was thinking I was being reckless again, I knew he wanted to scold me but then he noticed I was just saving his life, he nodded at me when I turned to look at him.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Always."

We spent another two minutes there, killing around fifty walkers between the five of us. When we were done with that large group, Daryl once again grabbed me by my wrist and made sure I was always close to him as we started jogging again, only to stop by the next corner because of a group of people this time. There were around eight and three were girls.

I hated to use the gun I had just gotten to kill them instead of the walkers but they also had weapons and as soon as they saw us, they would kill us without mercy or doubt. Rick was the first to step out and shot at them, followed by me, I shot two of the three women and one man, while Rick shot the other five people. I had shot two of them right in the head but shot one of the women in the stomach, just wounding her. Before we started running again, three walkers approached her and started eating her alive, I could hear her screams and a part of me wished I could have just killed her, but then I remembered these people intended to kill us and eat us, so some of the guilt vanished right away.

We started running again, just evading walkers for the time being until a large group got in our path once again. I cursed and started shooting at them until I ran out of ammunition. I killed a walker by hitting it in its head with the gun before throwing it away since it had no use to me anymore. Luckily, I gave us a chance by killing about twenty of that big group, leaving about another thirty or a few more.

I grabbed one of the knives again and killed three walkers before Daryl grabbed my right wrist and pulled me with him once again. I didn't complain, I just followed him but that didn't mean I was liking the way he was acting right now.

Maybe it was because we spent a few weeks apart and none of us were sure if we would find each other, or if the other was alive, or maybe he felt guilty he couldn't protect me from Joe's group, because that's what he told Rick, he said he should had protected me and had failed, or maybe he was just acting like this because of my little confession minutes ago, whatever the reason, it was getting annoying.

Fortunately we were were getting closer and closer to 'A', we ran into a small group of people, only four of them. Daryl killed one, Rick killed two with the gun, and I killed the other, using my big knife. I shuddered a bit as I tried to get the knife out of his body again, but it was stuck, I pulled harder but it wouldn't even bulge.

"There's no time!"

I felt how someone once again dragged me along but to my surprise it wasn't Daryl, it was Glenn the one that grabbed me by my elbow. We ran as fast as we could with no more interruptions and finally made it to A. Once there, I took out a second knife and killed walkers that were around us, as Rick went up the steps and opened the door of the train car, releasing our people.

"Come on! Fight to the fence!" Rick shouted at the ones inside the train car.

The eight people inside there ran out, the first one was Abraham. I noticed how Carl smiled when he saw that his father was still alive and then smiled at me as well, while I kept killing walkers.

"Go, go, go!" I heard someone said.

I stabbed one last walker before running away with the group, Daryl, Glenn and Sasha were the closest to me. I slowed my pace when I saw a walker right in front of me, I raised my hand and was about to kill it when Daryl beat me to it.

He took a deep breath as he turned to look at me, I only raised my eyebrows at him and looked at him with an annoyed expression.

"I got it!" I said once again, unfortunately our moment was stopped by five walkers. I threw a knife at one, while Daryl handled another one. I grabbed the third knife I had gotten and killed a second walker, while Daryl killed the other two. I ran to go grab the other knife I had thrown, I knew what I was doing was stupid but there were no more walkers that close to me, so I took the chance.

"Cecilia!" Daryl yelled. "Goddamnit, come here!"

Once I approached Daryl and he made sure I wasn't going anywhere else, we started running again, following the others. Daryl killed a couple of more walkers on our way to the fence, making sure I wouldn't have to kill any of them.

"Let's go!" I heard a female voice yelling, probably Michonne but I couldn't be sure.

I stopped not far from the fence and noticed the group gathering around, they found some kind of blanket and put it over the fence so it would hurt less when passing over it, they also had some wooden boxes right next to it, so we could step on them and climb the fence more easily.

Daryl was a bit busy with a couple of walkers as I looked at our group, oblivious to a walker coming towards me. I felt a hand on my shoulder but before I could turn around and kill the walker, because I knew it was a walker due to the moaning right next to my ear, the walker was pushed to the ground. When I did turn around, I saw Tara on top of it as she killed it.

I stared at her in disbelief, she just saved my life. She stood up as she looked right at me, probably she noticed how dumbfounded I was at her actions. She shrugged at me.

"We need to go," she told me before I could thank her.

I turned around and saw Daryl killing one last walker before he ran towards me, I was relieved he hadn't seen me almost getting bit on my neck and being saved by Tara because he would have freaked out and probably scold me for not paying attention to my surroundings for like an entire month.

"Let's go!" I exclaimed and this time it was me the one pulling Daryl with me.

Rosita was the first to climb over the fence, followed by Eugene. Just then I saw Gareth and other men on a roof, starting to shoot at us but luckily Rick had spotted them and shot at them, actually hitting at least one of them, making them back off instantly.

"Rick!" I yelled, I noticed he was looking at a walker in front of him, it was one of the butchers. "Come on!"

"Cecilia, go! Go!" Daryl yelled at me, pushing me towards the fence as I tried to get Rick to join us.

By then, Carl, Sasha, and Maggie had already gotten to the other side of the fence. Tara went up the fence before me, then as I was starting to go over it, Daryl actually grabbed me by my waist and pushed me over, making me go even faster.

I landed on my feet but lost my balance, falling on my butt. Tara and Sasha approached me quickly, getting me to my feet. I nodded at them to thank them before we moved forward so the rest of the people wouldn't land on top of us after they crossed the fence.

I ran to Carl then and embraced him tightly. I pulled back soon and then put my hands on his shoulders instead as I looked right into his bright blue eyes.

"You okay?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said with a nod. "You?"

"I guess," I told him. "At least we escaped."

I nodded at him, then I turned around to face the fence but kept an arm around his shoulders. I saw Glenn jumping to this side and seconds later I saw Daryl. I felt relieved when I saw he was alright. I felt how Carl also took a deep breath of relief when he saw his father climbing over the fence after Daryl.

I saw how Daryl looked frantically for me until he spotted me, once he did find me he walked towards me on a quick pace and then embraced both, Carl and me, for only a matter of seconds before we all started running away from the fence.

Once we were at a considerable distance from Terminus, who was in flames because of the bomb, and completely invaded by the dead, we decreased our pace, it was considerable safer now. Rick reminded Daryl of our weapons that were buried somewhere around here. Daryl nodded.

Daryl walked a couple of steps ahead of Rick and I, for the first time today it seemed like I wasn't his priority and I was glad he was giving me some space now, the one that slipped his hand in mine though, was Carl, who took a couple of quick steps to catch up with me. I turned to look at him and smiled, gripping his hand tightly as we walked.

"Right here," I heard Daryl say to Rick as he checked a small mark on a tree.

Daryl knelt and looked for a small shovel we had hid, Daryl found it and threw it at Rick, who started to dig to get our weapons once again.

"The hell are we still around here for?" Abraham demanded to know.

"Guns, some supplies," Rick told him as he kept digging. "Go along the fences, use the rifles. Take out the rest of 'em."

"What?" Bob exclaimed in disbelief.

"They don't get to live."

"Rick, we got out," Glenn told him. "It's over."

"It's not over till they're all dead," Rick said as he finally undug the bag of weapons and grabbing one small gun.

I stayed quiet but I agreed with Rick, I knew it was heartless and cruel but he was right. We left the Governor alive, thinking it was okay and months later, when nobody suspected anything would happen, he ambushed us, kidnapped two of us, killed many of our people and because of him we are here now. We couldn't leave anyone alive, they would come at us sooner or later.

"The hell it isn't, that place is on fire. Full of walkers!" Rosita exclaimed.

"I'm not dicking around with this crap," Abraham said. "We just made it out."

"The fences are down. They'll run or die," Maggie told Rick.

"I'm with Rick on this," I spoke up, surprising everyone, including Rick. I let go of Carl's hand and took a few steps towards Rick to grab my crossbow, Rick was handing it to me. Everyone followed my every step with their gaze. "We made that mistake once, and look what happened!"

"That was different!" Glenn told me.

"How? We should have gone after him and you know that! These people are not well in the head and if you think they will just let us go after killing who knows how many of them and destroying their place then you are out of your m... what?!"

I was interrupted by a soft tapping in my shoulder, I turned my head slightly to my left and my eyes landed on Daryl's blue ones, this time they looked soft and he seemed happy, he actually had a small smile on his face. I raised my eyebrows at him, I was so confused. I could bet he would be upset about my blood thirst.

"What?" I repeated but this time in a much softer way.

He flashed me a huge smile before he put his hands on my sides and turned me around to my right. My eyes opened twice its size and my mouth fell open as I gasped at what I was seeing. I blinked a few times trying to make sure I wasn't just seeing things my mind made up.

"Mum?" I asked when I recovered a bit.

I saw her bit her lip, looked down at the ground as tears threatened to spill and then she looked up at me again as she nodded. I couldn't help it, I just ran towards her as fast as I could and collided against her body as she wrapped me in her arms.

I felt her body shake as she sobbed and that made me start crying too. I hadn't seen her in at least three months and I never thought I would see her again. I wasn't sure how much time we stayed like that but I didn't care, I just tightened my grip on her.

"Cecilia," she muttered as she kissed the top of my head. "Oh my God!"

I pulled back a bit and looked into her eyes identical to mine, I still couldn't believe she was right in front of me. I dried her tears with my sleeve but more kept rolling down her dirty face.

"Don't cry," I told her as I wiped some of my own tears. "You are making me cry."

The group gave us some more time, before Daryl and Rick made their way to us. My mother kissed me on my forehead before she looked at the two men, I stepped aside and turned around so I was facing them now, when Daryl was close enough I put my arm around his waist. He smiled at me and did the same gesture.

"Did you do that?" Rick asked her.

My mother bit her lip, she probably wanted to reply but she knew her voice would break. She slowly nodded at Rick but she hadn't even finished her nod when Rick out of a sudden pulled her into a hug. My mother broke into sobs again as she hugged Rick back, who just hugged her even more. She just saved us all.

"Thank you," Rick told her just before he let go of her.

Then my mother turned to Daryl and me, but looking just at Daryl. She smiled at him with tears in her eyes. She took a step towards us and put her right hand over Daryl's left shoulder, then she nodded at him.

"Thank you," she told him. "For keeping her alive, for protecting her."

Daryl smiled at my mother before he turned to look at me, looking into my eyes. "Always," he muttered, I smiled back at him, nodding. We both turned to look at her with big smiles on our faces, she smiled too and then gave Daryl his crossbow, somehow she had recovered it from Terminus. Daryl tried to hide it but I knew how happy he was that he had it once again.

"You have to come with me," she said, looking from us to Rick, from Rick to the rest of the group.

My mother got on the lead, Rick walked right next to her. Michonne and Carl stayed close to the both of them. Sasha, Maggie, Glenn and Tara stayed a few feet behind them, while Rosita, Eugene and Abrahan walked behind those four, leaving Daryl and me in the very back.

I looked down at myself as we walked and noticed I had been wearing Daryl's winged vest since the night before. I really didn't want to take it off but I knew how much Daryl loved this piece of clothing so I slowly removed it and handed it to him.

"You can wear it today," he told me with a smile.

"You serious?"

"Yep," he exclaimed. "You better take the offer because it won't happen again."

"Okay." I chuckled before I put it back on. "I think it looks better on me, though."

"Yeah, right," he exclaimed, rolling his eyes at me.

"It does!" I said, sticking my tongue at him.

Daryl just shook his head at me, before he put his arm around my shoulder, bringing me closer to him and kissing the top of my head. I laughed at him and enjoyed the moment. As we kept walking through the woods, Daryl stole a kiss from me right when Rosita happened to look behind her and caught us. She probably noticed we were close but had no idea how close we were. I saw how her expression turned to a surprised one before she awkwardly turned to look in front of her again, I only smiled at her.

"Ceci," he said softly, I turned to look at him, that was a new nickname. "We need to talk."

"I know," I whispered, looking away from him and getting uncomfortable, knowing what he wanted to talk about. "Just not right now."

"Alright," he mumbled.

"Daryl?"

"Hmm?"

"What got into you today? I can fight, you know?" He sighed. "I can take care of myself."

"I just really believed I was going to lose you today," he said to me. He made us both stop in our tracks as he looked right at me. "I know I exaggerated today, I know what you are capable of and I truly hated to be that kind of man in there, to be so protective of you but I had had this feeling in the pit of my stomach since last night, and I only had a similar feeling when you were abducted. That time I ignored it, thinking it was nothing and look what happened, I wasn't going to ignore it twice. I can't lose you again."
"Whatever that feeling was, we are okay now. We got out," I told him with a smile. "So you can stop worrying about me and please, don't ever act that way again."

"Can't make any promises," he told me with a shrug and a mischievous smile. "You are my princess after all."

"Yeah, a princess that can fight," I retorted.

"I know, but sometimes it's nice having to protect you."

I chuckled, rolled my eyes at him and started to walk again, the others had gotten quite far from us. We quickened our pace slightly to catch up with them.

"Speaking of that," he said. "When will you tell your mum we are engaged?"

I don't know why but I burst out laughing, our engagement had really slipped my mind. My laugh made Abraham, Eugene and Rosita to look at me for a short moment. They probably believed I was insane. When the three of them stopped looking at me, Daryl laughed too, making me feel warm inside, it had been forever since I had listened to his laugh.

"I will let you have the honours to tell her," I told him, still chuckling. "It seems you are in her good side now."

"I don't want to push my luck," he told me. "Besides, with all she did and now that I know what she can do, I'm not so sure I want to get on her bad side and tell her."

"Are you actually scared of my mum?"

"And with every right to be," he told me before he pecked my lips. "Look what she did all on her own."

"I got to admit she distinguished herself with all that, I don't know how she did it but she got us all out of there," I told him. "I never felt proud of her until now."

"She's more badass than you now," Daryl said in a teasing tone.

"Oh, shut up!" I exclaimed, pushing him away from me as I pretended to be angry.

"Nevertheless, I love you just the same."

"You better," I said teasingly.

Hello everyone! Hope you liked the chapter! Carol is back now!

So, the other day I got some kind of inspiration to make a Carl/OC video, I'm not such a big fan of doing Carl but hey, when inspiration hits, it hits.
I also want to do another multicouple video soon so hopefully both will be done pretty soon, just need to find a song for the Carl one to start it! :P