It's officially Feb. 14th where I am, folks! And in the spirit of one of my favorite holidays, I offer a fic to wash down all that chocolate with!

Be advised that this story is set some time in the future and all assumptions are my own, and not based off of anything I've heard or read. Just having some Valentine's fun.

Enjoy; and review if you wish!

And of course: I disclaim everything. Except Alabama. I own the hell outta my homestate ;)

The slight warmth of the day was a relief, the sun piercing the puffy white clouds and streaming across the lake water down the hillside.

Carol blinked in the bright light and narrowed her eyes, focusing on the figure sitting by the dock.

Quickly glancing around, she first made note of the others in her presence:

Shane and Andrea could be seen on the other side of the lake, guns in hand, walking with such purpose that she knew they had to be scouting the area (for probably the third time that day, if she knew Shane well enough by this point)…

A light laugh sounded from her right. Up another small hill she could make out Lori and Carl heading toward the large building that served as their dining area, Rick not far behind, his teeth flashing at the tiny bundle of baby in his arms.

Carol smiled. She was glad they had made it this far; the child had been born in relative safety, and she wondered, for not the first time since they'd come to this place, if Rick and Daryl still thought it wise for them to eventually leave it.

Another light sound had her head turning back to the figure by the lake, and she breathed in the scent of the coming spring as she headed down the old concrete path towards it.

Rick had been unsure as to whether the men he'd confronted in the bar had been honest about the state of Fort Benning. Considering their shifty demeanor (and apparent willingness to kill and take with no remorse), it seemed agreeable to at least see for themselves whether the men had been weaving tales or offering friendly facts.

Sadly, it had been the truth.

Carol remembered the caravan stopping several miles outside of Columbus, staring into the distance at what appeared to be a warzone; abandoned tanks stood silent outside the fort, military vehicles burned inside and out, turned on their sides, a medley of weapons and bodies lying about haphazardly, with not even a flock of blackbirds to pick at the old flesh.

Most of the prone bodies appeared to be of downed Walkers.

And all of the moving ones certainly were.

Scattered throughout the open fort and beyond, the dead roamed quietly, bumping into one another on occasion in their search for something living to tear into.

She remembered Daryl standing behind her, looking just over her shoulder through the binoculars Rick had handed him.

"Looks like your bar buddies were right; this ain't worth it."

She remembered Lori's hand shaking slightly as it rubbed over the just-sprouting bump on her belly…

Rick's eyes as they glanced at her, met Shane's permanent glare briefly, and finally settled into Daryl's own:

"Okay….we back up. Bypass this area. Let's keep heading west."

The soft sounds drifted up to her more clearly as she neared who she now recognized to be Glenn, sitting on the dock, guitar in hand.

Fort Benning had been almost nine months ago.

At the onset of winter, they had been forced into a hard choice: Move westward, possibly north, and just keep moving, scavenging? Turn around and make a desperate bid to return to the farm? Or stop where they were; hold out through the cold to come?

The south was a harsh place in either season; summer suffocating, smothering and sometimes life threateningly so, the wintertime frigid- without snow mostly, but host to a deep-set biting cold and plenty of windy days to make it worse.

They had come to the most reasonable decision: find somewhere safe in Alabama, and hide away.

Lucky for them, the area they were in at the time this decision was made was almost perfect.

The old state park, small and unassuming, had been almost abandoned even before the world had ended. Carol recalled coming to the camp in her youth, on school field trips to learn of Native American folklore and search for arrowheads. She remembered the brown-bag lunches being eaten by the lake, the singing of old children's songs in the dining cabin. The place was much like the farm in its seclusion, surrounded by thick forest, far enough away from any decent-sized town and its likely dead-and-walking population. Fish were still ripe in the waters, deer dashed from the edges of the trees in the winter nights, and now, with spring emerging in mid-February, even the flower bushes planted by the old camp staff had begun to bloom once again.

Carol felt her lips pull upward and she smiled, both genuine and sad.

Sophia would have loved the place.

It was not without the occasional danger, of course: Vigil was still kept, scouting was still a must, and Walkers did roam nearby from time to time. Daryl had even killed a coyote that had come too close to the cabins for his liking.

But aside from the obvious never-ending perils, it was serene.

As Rick's laughing resounded again from far behind, she wondered if he would change his mindset about moving on in search of more security. The move would be long in coming, of course, with the newborn the top priority of the entire group; travel was practically a death sentence.

The dock met her feet and Carol made her way to where Glenn was situated.

They would not be leaving their new sanctuary anytime soon, she felt sure. They would not lose another child to the hell of the world beyond the trees.

Glenn's light strumming made her smile as she sat beside him. He stopped as she did so, a sheepish blush tinting his pale cheeks.

She almost wanted to pinch them.

"What are you playing?"

She did not recognize the tune he attempted, and knew nothing of either instruments or popular music (aside from a few more modern country tunes), and yet was not ashamed of the fact. She preferred the likes of old Hank Williams and his son, and was proud to proclaim it.

Glenn snorted a bit and grinned.

"Um…I don't really know. I was…trying to think of something original."

Carol noticed the youth's evaded eyes and glanced behind them at a cabin she knew to be the one Glenn shared with Maggie as well as Andrea and Shane.

She could not help but prod him in her good mood.

"Writing a love song?"

The flush on the boy's face deepened, confirming the unanswered question and likewise startling a realization into her.

Carol thought for a moment before nodding to herself with an amused grin.

It was February 13th. The eve of Valentine's Day.

The obviousness of Glenn and Maggie's relationship was real enough to all of them. The girl would not have left with them otherwise, for any reason.

She loved him. He loved her.

Carol was happy for the young couple. They were lucky to find each other in such an awful state of the world…

A loud thump sounded behind them and Carol turned her head to find Daryl hopping up onto the dock, striding down the length of it with a mission in his eyes, a fishing rod found in the recreation building gripped firmly in his hand. He glanced down at her briefly, not meeting her eyes but offering a small nod.

They had, for the most part, recovered from the distance Sophia's death had placed between them- and looking back, if she had known how far away the tragedy would have pushed him, she probably would have gotten up and gone to that burial service….if only to ensure the man did not turn her choice of grieving into a reason to all but move off the farm and avoid them all like the plague.

They had discussed it only a few times, and very little had been said. If she wanted to be honest with herself, any real conversations she'd had with Daryl had been few and far-between since they'd departed from Hershel's land.

Nevertheless, he was always nearby. Dale's beloved RV was still with them, set up in the middle of the campgrounds, and she still preferred to sleep in its small, cramped cabin bed as opposed to one of the large open spaces in the solid wooden buildings that surrounded them.

And every night, when Dale or Andrea would take over watch for Daryl, she would hear him come in, pull the pillow and blanket out from underneath the table, and spread out on the floor just in front of her.

And every night, provided lingering nightmares of the farm's tragic experience did not awake her in tears, she slept soundly with the knowledge that he was there.

Carol drew her eyes away from the man's back (or was she staring a little further down by now?) and refocused on Glenn, who sat nervously plucking at the strings of his instrument.

"I think it's very sweet that you want to keep this holiday alive for Maggie."

At this Glenn smiled, a hint of confidence and thoughtfulness filling his gaze as he set it on her.

"She'd seemed so sad when we did that little 'Thanksgiving' thing, and again at 'Christmas'…she missed her family, she said. Can't blame her…; I thought maybe giving her something tomorrow would make up for it somehow…"

Carol caught the sad tone in his voice and placed a hand at the neck of the guitar, daring to pluck one of the strings simply out of curiosity.

She did not miss Daryl's pause as he cast a line out, glancing over his shoulder at them and very possibly eavesdropping.

"I think it would help to remind her of a holiday that she can truly share with someone close to her. I always enjoyed Valentine's Day as a young girl, but most of my gifts consisted of brightly wrapped candies that were given to me by my mother. I remember getting flowers one year in high school from my first boyfriend…."

A second stiff pause from the fisherman on the dock had her trailing to study him before giving Glenn her undivided attention.

"I never received another Valentine after meeting and marrying Ed. I suppose I can't say I'm an expert on the holiday, but…I think writing Maggie a song is very original and sweet."

The Asian boy sat straighter at her words, but she caught the empathy in his eyes at her mention of Ed. She waved it off, moving to stand and glanced at Daryl one more time as she prepared to join Dale on the roof of the RV and do something useful (if only she could fish worth a darn…)…

"Maggie probably won't be in the dining house long. Can't ruin the surprise now can we?"

With that, she smiled at the startled look on Glenn's face as he refocused on the guitar and she wandered off the dock.

The birds seemed to sing louder on February 14th.

Shaking her head to herself, Carol slid from the RV with plates in hand, lunchtime closing in and her own stomach reminding her in earnest.

She deliberately looked down the hill at the couple sitting on the dock, Glenn's guitar playing softly and the smile on his face visible even from her distance.

Entering the old building, she set the plates on one of the picnic tables and looked around, brow furrowing slightly at the lack of both people and food.

A figure cast itself behind her in the open doorway, and Carol turned to find Rick coming in with a few cans in hand.

"Startin' to run out of the canned stuff now; Daryl's out hunting. Apparently the fishing didn't go so well yesterday. I should've gone with him. It's like I have a baby and forget I know how to hunt…"

A small laugh escaped her at the man's residual daddy-joy. She had long since come to terms with Rick's place as the group's leader, and could no longer blame him for Sophia's fate. In the end, she knew, no one was to blame.

Life was life, and death was death.

It was better to live life smiling, if possible.

With a wink the former deputy departed, just as Daryl emerged in the sunlight and gestured to her.

"Deer are movin' on, not wantin' to move in the heat of the day. Killed a few squirrels…."

Taking his brief message as his beseeching to assist him with the cooking of said squirrels, Carol followed him quietly to one of the small fire pits they had set up, another table (because the old camp was practically a picnic-table factory) conveniently on standby for Daryl and Rick to gut and clean the little rodents.

Rick, however, paused ahead of them suddenly, turning to walk away back towards the RV with not a glance their way. She shrugged to herself and assumed that nature called.

Daryl was quick on his feet and she picked up her pace behind him. As he moved to recover the string of squirrels from the nearby tree he'd hung them on, Carol stopped short at what lay at the edge of the cleaning table.

Three roses, two pink and one yellow, hung slightly over the side, the colorful bulbs just barely struggling to open and spread.

Tentatively she reached for them, uncertain for a moment before looking up to find Daryl eyeing her in the midst of driving a knife into the chest of a squirrel.

"Oh...I found those growin' over by the old Welcome Center building."

Her hand landed on a stem, and she realized the thorns had been shorn off each one.

"Are…are these for me?"

She narrowed her gaze when he huffed at her a bit.

"They sure as hell ain't for Rick." She had to smile at him then, his humor a refreshing change from his usual gruff silence.

As she lifted the tiny bouquet to her nose, Daryl stopped his half-hearted work on the critter in his hands and watched her.

"Don't really know any stories about those…."

She snorted into the sweet-smelling blossoms-to-be, her grin faltering but not fading. His eyes were unwavering, but Carol could still see the nervous twitch his left one made, along with a hesitant quiver of his upper lip.

"So, uh….happy Valentine's Day or whatever."

Carol brought her hands together around the thornless stems, drawing the flowers close to her chest and wondering if he could see how her heart thudded in it.

Her teeth broke through her grin and she smiled fully at him.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Daryl. Thank you."

She saw his mouth quirk as he ducked his head to stare back down into squirrel guts.

So...yes. I wanted to give some happy to the current melancholy that is the Walking Dead fandom. Hope you guys enjoyed my attempt at Daryl fluff!

Also: The state park I mention exists. I live about an hour south of it. It's actually a pretty good spot to survive in a post-apocalyptic hell.

Happy Valentine's Day!