AN: Sorry to keep you waiting so long for this one. I try to make it worth it. Hope you agree. I also hope you know I'd get these out sooner if I could. It's nearly a year later from when I started this dark journey and I feel like I'm just getting into the heart of things. Almost. Thanks so much for your patience and your sweet words of encouragement. Your support means the world to me and helps me keep at it. Love you all! -jb

Chapter 6

Cicadas were droning on in the oppressive Georgia heat as Daryl approached the sad house that he grew up in with trepidation. Not the one he had lived in when his mom was alive; no, it was the dilapidated one he'd lived in after she'd gone and burned herself down to nothing. Erased herself from his life. It was the cold and lonely one that he had been trapped in alone with his mean drunk of a daddy, who ruled like a tyrant from his dumpster throne in the living room. The shack with the depressed front porch and crumbling foundation that seemed to want to collapse under the weight of the grief that lived within.

The door opened with a haunting creak when Daryl pushed it. His breath shortened as he took a miserable step inside. Light seemed to abandon the dreary space; it was full of shadows that distended along the walls like claws poised to strike. The air was steeped with apprehension, reeking of old moonshine and stale tobacco which bled from the filthy walls that closed around him like a vise. He felt the pressure building in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. Hairs on the back of his neck bristled with unpleasant anticipation as the drumming in his ears beat at a deafening pace. A peculiar, narrow hallway stretched out endlessly with rows of imposing doors spanning the length of it. Every door was shut tight against prying eyes. By rote, he opened the door to his bedroom and saw Carol lying there on the rickety wooden floor. Stripped raw and violated. Muddy feet bound. Hands tied behind her back and chained to a cement block. His breath was pulled violently from him, leaving him doubled over in agony. Sharply, her eyes opened in alarm as he noticed her. At the exact same time, the floor began to crack and splinter as it gave away beneath her. To his horror, her body went tumbling into a dark pool of water and began to rapidly sink into its murky depths. The grief tore through his chest in a violent explosion as he screamed out her name. Unhinged, he flung himself towards her, but smacked into an invisible barrier which prevented him from entering the room. No matter how hard he banged his fists or threw himself against it, he couldn't break through. He couldn't reach her. All he could do was watch helplessly as she sank into the mire, her blue eyes wild with fear.

"Please!"

Her urgent, disembodied voice cried out, and he ran down the hallway, chasing after it like a ghost. Frantically, he tried door after door, but each time was the same. He saw her battered face, her perfect porcelain face, ruined. Her desperate eyes silently begging him. She was drowning and he was completely powerless to stop it.

It was Michonne who woke him. They had made it back from the run just before daybreak. As she crept in towards her cell, she had heard him whimpering in his sleep.

Disoriented and drenched in sweat, he called out in agony as he woke, a seizing pain in his chest. "Carol!" he gasped as his arm reached out into the darkness.

"She's alright," Michonne reassured him softly, grasping his trembling hand. "She's asleep."

"She ain't alright," he disagreed with a surly tone, jerking his hand away from her as he scrambled to sit up.

Immediately, he scurried closer to the bunk so that he could see Carol for himself. Only once he confirmed that she was indeed lying there in the shadows, sleeping soundly, could he take a breath. But the tight feeling in his chest didn't leave. Instead, it pressed on him from all sides, drawing out his fears, stretching him tautly until his anger was as sharp as a razor's edge.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Sometimes the question worked with Daryl, but Michonne could tell from the seething look he flashed her in warning and his aggressive posturing that it wouldn't this time. He was riled up and ready to pounce—she just needed to let him be.

Daryl refused to talk about the nightmare. Talking about it meant visualizing the repulsive scene again. He had no control over what he dreamed, but he wouldn't waste a conscious moment dwelling on it. Pushing it down, he armed himself in his murderous rage instead.

"What do you fuckin' think!" he hissed, releasing a string of curses under his breath.

He'd been up most of the night with Carol, who slept fitfully. The tea Beth had brewed kept Carol calm during her waking hours, but didn't seem to be as effective in helping her sleep through the night. Like him, Carol didn't talk much about the nightmares. But he didn't need her to; he knew what she was dreaming about. He could see the pain engraved into every feature of her face, leaving it a mask of torturing regret. Daryl knew that the loss of Sophia was weighing heavily on her, and she seemed to disintegrate under the burden of it, retreating into some fractured corner of herself. Unreachable. Daryl never had much use for faith, but Carol had, and he tried to hold onto his fraying sense of hope that the others tried to lend him. He wasn't sure what to believe, but if there was a God, He surely had an affinity for sadism, to allow a mother to relive the death of her daughter over and over again. How much pain could one woman endure without consequence?

The hardest part for Daryl was that she refused to let herself be comforted by his soft words. It stoked his insecurities. He tried not to take the rejection personally, knowing she wasn't herself, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was lost to him, and he spent his waking hours wondering if she'd ever make her way back.

"Think you been cooped up in here too long," Michonne reasoned calmly.

Daryl stared coldly into her sympathetic brown eyes until he realized she was not the source of his ire. Something broke inside him, and the urge to fight slowly dissipated. The ice in his eyes melted into despair.

It was painful for Michonne to watch his transformation. Briefly, she saw how vulnerable he felt—how terrified. How close beneath the surface the fear of his own powerlessness lay. How desperate he was to avoid it. She knew he needed a distraction.

"And I can tell you never had that shower," she admonished him with a warm smile. "Go on, get out of here. I'll stay with her."

"Ain't goin' nowhere. She could wake up. Been doin' that a lot," he flashed her a look of warning. "And she don't know you."

Michonne gave him a puzzled look, but didn't take his attitude personally.

"We were gonna have a meetin' when y'all got back," Daryl sighed and nodded towards the hallway. She stepped outside the cell, and he followed.

In the hallway, he quietly disclosed the key details of the events that had unfolded the day before. Michonne kept pestering him with questions and wouldn't leave him alone until he finally agreed to wake Hershel to have him sit with Carol.

Afterward, Daryl silently slipped out of the cellblock into the bleak morning, his hopeless sense of inadequacy chipping away at his brittle confidence, held together only by an inexhaustible rage. Barely aware of how the cool air cut through him, he eagerly sought something to do to keep himself occupied and from unraveling altogether. He was desperate to restore his sense of efficacy, which had been slowly eroded by the frightened whimpers that leaked steadily from Carol throughout the night. Propelled by this unrestrained fury, he stomped out into the gray dawn, down to the reinforced fence, where he began to pick off the accumulated walkers that had clustered there, trying to rid himself of the feelings of impotence that had built up inside him. The effort seemed to do little to quell the wrath, but provided him at least with a temporary distraction.

As he violently stabbed the decaying walkers with a crowbar, he noticed a couple of dead rats at the base of the fence. Another lay partially devoured between the links. He turned to survey the yard but could not discern clear tracks in the grass. Everyone came outside to work or otherwise enjoy the fresh air. Less than a dozen survivors from Woodbury and the environs now remained with them at the prison. The ones who hadn't gotten sick. Naturally, Daryl's suspicions originated with them, since he knew them the least. The danger lurking within continued to fuel his anger. They needed to seek it out and eliminate it. He wasn't going to rest easy until it was done. Especially not with Carol so—incapacitated.

Against his will, his mind returned to the filthy floor of that derelict trailer in the woods. Her pale skin was a purple patchwork of contusions and festering lacerations that barely clung to her protruding bones. She had been nearly lifeless; a skeleton.

If we had arrived any later–

His heart, bloodthirsty with his need for vengeance, contracted sharply in his chest. The pain of it pulled him from the memory and fed his fury. He turned back to the fence and shoved the crowbar deep into the eye socket of a male walker, giving it a vicious twist before pulling it out. Before the body had even collapsed to the ground, Daryl was savagely thrusting the cold iron into the groin of another as he plotted his revenge.

When he had finished butchering the dead, he swayed as he stood there, taking in the carnage, intoxicated by his bloodlust, before stumbling towards the parked vehicles. With single-minded focus, he reached the pickup and drove outside the fence to gather the bodies for burning, a task normally requiring a partner. Juiced up on adrenaline, he threw himself into the back-breaking task of piling the bodies into the truck bed. He didn't even notice Rick tramping across the outer field towards him.

Rick had caught the end of Daryl's violent outrage, recalling his own grief-filled descent into madness after Lori's death. He was filled with compunction for his decision to banish Carol. He hadn't known what the right thing to do was, but unilaterally meting out her punishment had not been any wiser than her decision to act alone in the killing of Karen and David. Daryl was right, he realized, the council was created to reduce the strain on a single leader. Rick made too many mistakes, and it seemed the list of the people he'd failed grew exponentially. Carol was his sister; she had fought by his side, looked after his children, nursed his wounds. Letting fear dictate his actions, he betrayed her trust and brought harm to her by forcing her out because he was unable to forgive her. Now, it didn't seem possible to forgive himself for the wreckage that lay in his wake. He had failed his children and his brother, too. He had failed them all. However long it took, he was going to redeem himself; he owed Daryl too much not to try to make amends. It wasn't going to be easy; the hunter was coiled tightly and poised to strike out at any moment. Still, he needed to try. Deliberately, Rick made his way towards the angry man.

"Looks like rain's coming," Rick stated as he approached.

Soaked with sweat, Daryl was pulling the torso of a large corpse onto the bed of the truck. "Looks like," Daryl commented snidely, continuing his work without a glance. In the past, it would have been an invitation to chit chat, but Daryl had no intention of stopping to make idle conversation with the man.

Once he slid the body in place, Daryl jumped down from the back of the truck to grab another one. Rick moved to try to help Daryl lift its feet.

"I got it," Daryl growled as he jerked the rotting corpse away and clumsily tossed it into the truck bed. Stubbornly, he preferred to struggle alone with the task rather than accept any help from Rick.

Rick stared back at Daryl with frustration. "I'm trying here, Daryl."

"Trying what exactly?" Daryl snapped resentfully. "Tryin to make nice? Like a little chat about the weather's gonna smooth it all over? Water under the bridge, hmm? Well, it ain't under the fuckin' bridge, Rick. There's a goddamn flood!"

Angrily, Daryl threw up his hands as he tried to push away the feelings of powerlessness that were encroaching upon him once again. He shook his head violently to disperse the images from his dream that inundated him again from behind his eyes, but the weight of the visions was pressing down too heavily on his chest.

"All this time I had with her, and I...I let her slip through my fingers," his voice crackled with pain, making him pause. Swallowing his remorse, he remained determined to continue. "But I ain't gonna let her drown."

He bit down hard on his lip to tighten the lid on his resolve and prevent the welling tears from falling. They burned in his eyes, refueling his anger. Agitated, Daryl began to pace.

"But you," he shook his finger at Rick emphatically, "you threw her out like yesterday's scraps and fed her to the wolves! Now you want me to jus' roll over an' play nice? For what? To ease your guilty conscience?" He stopped in front of Rick to glare at him. "I can't forget what you did. How? How can I? Every time I look at you..." he winced. "I can't unsee what they did to her!" Turning away to deter another visual assault, his mouth filled with a bitter taste that he spat on the ground, trying to expel it.

Scratching his beard, Rick withstood Daryl's wrath, understanding the pain the hunter was in and knowing he was responsible for it.

"I know you're worried about her, scared she won't remember. I get that. And I screwed up. I get that, too. Okay? You have every right to be angry. You do. I made another bad call. I was tryin' to... I didn't realize... I owe you both more than I can ever repay you. But that's not going to stop me from trying. In the meantime, we still need to work together. We have to. Just let me help you, Daryl."

Daryl drew his brow into a cynical scowl. "Help me? Don't think I can afford your kind o' help, Rick. No! You drew a line in the sand. Made it clear whose side you're on. And it ain't mine. Ain't hers." His face crumpled distastefully. "Work together? Ha! I've seen what happens to all your partners. Shane? Lori? No, thanks! You're lookin' out for you and yours, and it's fuck all the rest of us." Dismissing the man, he shook his head. "Just stay outta my way."

Getting into the truck, Daryl slammed the door and sped off into the fields to dispose of the bodies. He was hurting and it pained Rick to see what he had done to the man he considered his brother.

Daryl skipped breakfast. He couldn't stomach the oatmeal again. They needed meat, but the snares were empty that morning, and he couldn't leave the prison now. Who was left to send out on a hunt? Michonne was the only one of them who could be quiet enough in the woods. But she had just returned, it wasn't right to send her back out again. The guilt began to eat at him. It was too bad, because he really needed to kill something. It made him itchy just thinking about it. Crawling in his own skin, he paced outside the cellblock under the overcast sky. It felt like as long as he kept moving, the dangerous thoughts wouldn't have time to coalesce in his mind. Time seemed to creep as he braced himself for the council meeting they were having later that morning to discuss Carol's situation.

When the hour finally arrived, he checked on Carol before heading to the meeting. She was lying on the bed facing the wall and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Beth was in the cell with her, reading in a chair in the corner. The girl glanced up and smiled at him when she saw him hovering in the doorway. He nodded at her and made his way to the library, where Sasha, Glenn, and Hershel had already gathered. Michonne, who had taken Carol's place, was also seated at the table.

Prior to opening up the discussion to the whole group, the council met privately to address a few other issues. It didn't take long for them to get right to business.

"Found more rats out by the fence this morning," Daryl said. "We gotta set up a patrol around the perimeter."

"Could it be someone from outside?" Michonne wondered.

"Maybe. But from the looks of it, it's more likely an inside job," he said.

"And there's the matter of the dead rabbits," Glenn stated in accordance. "Those were definitely from inside. Think it's all the same person? A group?"

"But who?" inquired Sasha. "And why?"

"Kevin's the only one left from the Decatur group. He's kind of a hot head. Do you think it could be retaliation for Karen and David?" he asked the question Daryl was thinking.

"Can't be," Sasha explained. "Rats were showing up before they were killed." She looked Daryl square in the eye. "Listen, I told Tyreese about Carol. About what she did."

Daryl's eyes simmered with rage, feeling the argument brewing in his chest.

"He's my brother," she explained, meeting his anger with a familiar rationale. "He had a right to know," she emphasized, dismissing his challenge before it left his lips. "But I understand her reasons. I saw what that sickness did to people, what it almost did to me."

"He gonna be a problem?" he demanded.

Sasha raised her eyebrows and gave an uncertain, sideways nod of her head. "I'm working on him," she explained.

It wasn't much of a reassurance, Daryl thought to himself. He frowned, but nodded at her, showing his acceptance of her answer and moving on.

"When was the last time anyone went down to the lower level?" he inquired.

"It's been a few weeks," Sasha said. "But the gate was locked last time I checked it. Around the time Tyreese found that mutilated rabbit down there."

The basement had always been the most vulnerable because the north side of the prison had been badly damaged. It was how Sasha and Tyreese had found the survivors originally. They had fought their way up through the tombs into the belly of the prison. When the group finally cleared out the prison's lower level, they built a gate to prevent walkers and others from wandering in. They had chosen a gate rather than blocking it off permanently, just in case the survivors needed another way to sneak out of the prison. After the Governor's attack, they had to rethink all of their emergency strategies.

"I'll put a team together, and we'll go down to check it out in the next few days," Glenn offered.

"Nah, better add a basement sweep to the patrol route. We're sittin' ducks if it gets breached without anyone knowin'." They needed to crack down on safety, Daryl thought. "We gotta start installin' those solar panels, too. The battery's tapped on the generator. It'll be more efficient, and we can keep the fuel for the vehicles. Just for runs."

"Where can we get a new battery?" Glenn asked. "That generator is ancient. Think they still even make them? I saw the plans Marcus drafted. It'll take a while for us to gather what we need to install enough of those solar panels."

"We did fine without electricity," Hershel said. "We can go a few weeks without it. Stick to the lanterns and flashlights for now. Ration out the batteries."

"I'll put a team together to track down the solar panels and equipment," Michonne added.

"Anything else before we let everyone else in?" Hershel asked.

When the question was answered with silence, he opened the door to the library and the others began to file in. Daryl had been dreading the whole situation. Having to face everyone at the meeting was in direct conflict with his desire to avoid thinking about it. He didn't want to be reminded of what happened to Carol; her current vulnerability made him uneasy. In his mind, his inadequacy was complicit in her banishment, and his guilt continued to deplete his meager stores of hope for her recovery. On top of it, there was an active threat within their fences. The pressure just kept mounting and hardening in his chest.

He never asked to be a leader, but somehow he felt the burden of it all the same. The council had been Carol's idea. Daryl recalled the day she and Hershel ganged up on him and pressed him to participate.

"We need someone who's good in a crisis, and you've proven yourself of that, son," Hershel had told him. "Plus, you can handle yourself out there. We need someone like that to plan strategies for supply runs."

"You got Glenn," Daryl had reminded them. He had never thought he had been good at anything.

"Glenn is quick, no doubt about it," Carol had said perceptively, "but you have a lot of experience in...evasive maneuvers."

Daryl sighed in futility, knowing he couldn't escape.

As they arrived, the survivors began to seat themselves in the remaining chairs and on the floor along the bookshelves. When everyone had finally gathered in the library, Daryl was relieved as Hershel took the reins and led the discussion. Daryl avoided looking at both Rick and Tyreese, choosing to focus instead on the two girls, Lizzie and Mika, who sat between Maggie and Glenn. The younger one smiled at him nervously, and it hit him in his gut how much she reminded him of Sophia. No wonder Carol had her doubts. He lifted his chin to acknowledge the girl, but let his eyes drift away to keep his distance.

Overwhelmed by the proceedings, Daryl zoned out, neglecting the discussion. He began to scan the room, seizing up the handful of others that were new to their family. At the top of his list of suspicious persons was Kevin Cassidy, a sandy-haired blond with dark eyes, the last survivor from the Decatur group that Rick had brought in on his last run. Next was Marcus Jackson, the engineer who had promised to help the group install the solar panels, thereby reducing their need for fuel. Then there was Twyla White, a former bus driver from Newnan; Julio Ramirez, an ex-construction worker; and Mike and Shelia DuBois, a middle-aged couple Daryl and Michonne had found hiding in an old silo, living off of wild leeks and potatoes they dug up on a nearby farm. Daryl couldn't figure out a motive for any of them, except for loyalty. He didn't know how close Kevin was to David to know if the man was vindictive enough to seek vengeance. Daryl only knew how aggrieved he felt when someone he cared about was hurt by another. There was nothing that could stop him from seeking his own sense of justice. Case in point, the Governor was dead, and the men who defiled Carol would someday meet the same fate.

As his revenge fantasies began to fade, Hershel's words began to leak into Daryl's consciousness.

"So, it's become very clear that in addition to her memory problems, Carol is also suffering from emotional ones. She is easily overwhelmed. There's been so much that's occurred, her mind is not able to process everything that's happened to her, and she just blacks out for a while."

"I've seen it before," Bob nodded with understanding, "in soldiers. Hazard of the job. It's not uncommon when someone has experienced a life-threatening event. Or multiple ones. It's like they're there, but they're not there. They're completely zoned out. I felt a little like that myself when you first found me."

He found Daryl's eyes in the crowd. Bob could identify with the loss that was burned into the ashen hollows on Daryl's face. The hunter looked a step away from death itself.

"We need to provide her with a safe, predictable environment," Hershel continued to explain, "in order for her to start feeling secure enough to recover her memories and begin to put the pieces together. She's remembered a little bit, but it seems to be all jumbled up inside her. She likely doesn't have a clear linear narrative to explain when these memories occurred or how, and that's adding to her confusion. They're causing her nightmares. She's having flashbacks, meaning that she is experiencing these memories as if they are happening to her in the present.

"It's in her best interest that we restrict our interactions with her until she's built up enough trust with those she's already met. Then, over time, we can slowly introduce her to everyone else."

Daryl wasn't sure how he made it through the meeting. But suddenly, Sasha was staring at him with a furrowed brow.

"You okay?"

Nodding once, he grunted at her. "Gotta be."

The skeptical crease in her brow deepened, and she tried to stare the truth out of him. But it was an ineffective tactic. She didn't blame him for brooding over her admission that she had revealed the truth about Carol to Tyreese. He would be angry with her for a bit, but he would get over it. Accepting this, she simply left.

When Daryl turned to head back into C-block, he found Michonne standing there with her arms akimbo. Her eyes were firmly focused on him. "I can stand here all day, 'cause we both know that's bullshit."

He glowered at the astute woman for seeing through his thin defenses and shifted the weight in his feet, turning away from her scrutiny.

"I know you," she continued tenaciously, unfazed by his subterfuge. "All that time on the road out there together taught me a few things. I know your card tricks, remember? So trust me when I tell you that I know that what we saw in that trailer is still with you. Because it's still with me. And now you're carrying everything because you think you have to. But you don't. You can't keep pushing it down. You have to do something about it. Before it destroys you."

Her warning only annoyed him, so he hastily slipped away from her. He was done talking.

But she had been right. And the truth of it writhed under his skin and kept twisting, intensifying as the stress he carried tightened around him. He finally admitted to himself that he needed some time to decompress. On the way to pick up some clean clothes from his cell, he checked on Carol again. She was still lying on her side with her face to the wall, so he thought she was sleeping. His regret was just another cruel cinch in his chest.

"M'gonna take a shower," he told Beth shyly. It still felt odd to him, informing anyone about his activities. "Get your father if you need anythin'."

"I will," Beth promised.

Wearily, he made his way to the empty shower room. Grateful for the privacy it afforded him, he tossed his clean clothes on an empty bench with a sigh of relief. He needed the respite from his constant worry. It had been too long since he had really focused on any of his own needs or had any speck of solitude. But his guilt was merciless.

His body was stiff and aching from all the recent turmoil. He was just noticing the extent of his fatigue. Hell, if he was really being honest with himself, he'd been tapped out and running on fumes since the tragedy in D-block. It had just been one disaster after another after that. Time alone was a luxury he hadn't been able to afford. Weeks of sleeping on the cold, hard ground had taken its toll, reminding him that he wasn't getting any younger. But he knew he'd go through it all again just to know Carol was safe. The burden of it all had buried itself deep into the cracks of his skin, leaving him ripe with the sweat of his hard labor. His bones creaked as he bent to pull off his dirt-encrusted pants that hung loosely at his hips now. The cleanest part of him was the shirt Michonne had handed him to wear the night before and that, too, was now infused with a sticky film of walker guts and sweat. Slowly peeling the clothes from his afflicted body, he finally bared himself.

Standing there defenseless on the concrete floor, a memory of a happier time broke through.

"Can you imagine? Real showers?" Carol asked dreamily as they discussed their plans to bring water from the creek into the prison.

"Daryl probably doesn't know what you're talking about," Glenn teased.

"Shut up! Jus' 'cause I don't mind a li'l dirt–"

"Hmm. I woulda pegged Daryl for a bath man. All that time at Hershel's, always sneakin' off to the pond," T-Dog chuckled heartily.

"We'll just have to pick up a bathtub on the next run. And some Mr. Bubble. We'll tell everyone it's for the baby," Glenn smirked, "but we'll know the truth."

"Ha! That's something I'd like to see," Carol stated provocatively. "Daryl Dixon in a bubble bath." She squinted her eyes as if picturing the moment, making him blush just for imagining her seeing him in that way and wondering how it might come to be.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with relaxin' after a long day," Daryl said defensively.

Snorted laughter erupted among them.

"Shut up!"

As the memory faded, he felt even more alone in his devastating heartbreak.

He stood naked on the cold tile, an effigy of saddled grief, as the cool water streamed down the length of his tired frame. After a while, the soothing trickle of the water began to erode the wall that Daryl had constructed around himself out of sheer will. Like a dam bursting, a sob erupted through his body as thick layers of accumulated grime began to fall away. His resistance weakened. Collapsing at the knees, he fell like a wounded soldier exhausted from a lengthy battle. Every emotion blew forth like a ruptured artery, and he felt himself bleed out. The panic over D-block, the dreadful mega-herd they barely escaped from, the shock of losing Carol so abruptly, the anger over Rick's betrayal, the overwhelming horror of seeing Carol so shattered and unrecognizable, the total disgust and violent fury over what had happened to her out there—it was a heavy load, and tears spouted from his eyes from the pressure of carrying it all. His long-held suffering leaving him prostrate, he let it run down the drain as it sought its desperate release.

Broken open and emptied of his burden, Daryl found himself doing something completely unfamiliar—he prayed.

Know I ain't worthy, but if anyone deserves mercy it's her. Please. Please help her to find her way back to us.

He wasn't a true believer. But he wasn't doing this for himself. It was all for her. When it came to helping Carol, he would upend every granite boulder to make her happy and feel safe. There was no risk too great, nothing he would not sacrifice. He would bow before kings and gods, humiliate himself, cut off his own limb, knowingly lay down his life for her. Begging for mercy to be shown to the woman he loved was nothing to him if it could provide her with some relief. God had never done him any favors, and had likely forsaken the world with the state it was in, but Daryl could not afford his pride. It had already cost him too much.

The crisp water felt invigorating. Trying to let everything else go, he focused on the feel of it against his skin. He let it wash over him as he lathered himself with hope, cleansing both his body and soul.

He was truly glad to be home. He'd never felt that way before about any place he'd ever lived. Then again, love and hope had always been in short supply where he was from. But he'd found his place among this tight band of survivors. Hell, he'd earned it with his own sweat and blood.

By the time he finished showering, Daryl was beginning to believe that things could be alright. He still didn't know how to move forward with Rick, but he couldn't let his rage cripple him. As he dressed, he got to thinking that even if Carol didn't recover right away, he and the others would support her and help her to find her place among them. Most of all, he had to keep believing it was possible for Carol to remember, because the alternative was too unbearable.

Walking back to the cellblock, Daryl felt more relaxed, virtually renewed with hope.