Disclaimer: The Walking Dead belong to Robert Kirkman and AMC.

Hey everyone! The intention of this fic is not, by any means, to fan the flames between the ship wars. I'm a diehard Caryler, but I don't hate Beth. What follows is simply what I wish to watch on my screen and this is the fanfiction universe :) So the premise here is that the knife Daryl holds in the trailer is Carol's knuckle buster and definitely goes for Vicki and Petra with all my love. Enjoy!

"You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."
―J.K. Rowling,Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The grip around the knuckle buster is painful. His fingers flex, one by one curve and dip inside the holes. They fit perfectly –the holes are designed for that exact purpose after all. It's there, in his hand, but his intense stare struggles to verify it, because what he feels can't possibly stray any further from that. This knuckle buster, the very sight and touch of the sharp blade, stabs him straight in the heart. Stabs him breathless. Stabs him dead.

He never was one for knuckle busters. Too short range, too restraining for his wild nature, too difficult to rid immediately. He didn't like them for the very same reasons she was so fond of them. And he had warned her, nagged her brain ragged time and time again, that in a crucial moment that sorry excuse of a knife would betray her. She hadn't heeded, never did, pig-headed and stubborn like a cinder wall. She had probably paid the price with her life.

She. He can't even say her name. Not ever again.

He squints up at Beth who's sitting across from him, propped up on a board identical to the one he leans so heavily against, as though there still exists a surface sturdy enough to carry the weight of his soul. Pipedreams. The girl is fully absorbed into scribbling another entry in her diary and he's jealous of her serene expression. She's at peace and he wonders how that's even possible.

The scorching pain across his chest suspends the air inside him again and his gaze darts back to the knuckle buster clasped in his hand. He hates her. Not Beth. Her. He blames and hates her for tricking him into believing.

I can't lose you too.

You're every bit as good as them. Every bit.

A man of honor.

It's pretty romantic. Wanna screw around?

Nine lives, remember?

This is our home.

Just so you know, I liked you first.

You're gonna have to learn to live with the love.

Sorry, Pookie.

Bullshit. Two years full of crap. Open up. Let people in. Accept what you feel. You're the best man I've ever met. Big empty words, full of phony promises translated into nothing tangible, just betrayal and that knuckle buster cutting deep inside him.

He complied with minimum resistance, followed her every coax like a damn gospel, trusted her blindly, possessed with her hexes. Like a fool. Like a fuckin' fool. And for what? So that he winds up right here and right now and his heart is so hurt, so damaged beyond repair that he feels the blood dripping. He can actually hear the droplets pool in the pit of his existence.

Sorry, Pookie. Sorry, fuckin' idiot, lil' simple-minded piece of shit, Pookie.

He should've known better than that, you'd think he'd have learned his lesson and never let her get the better of him. Stripping your heart and allowing people to lay their filthy fingers on it rounds up in getting it handed back to you in tatters.

He hates her. And he's not even mad about Karen and David's murders. Never bought this shit to begin with. Like he told Rick, it ain't her. And even if, by some twisted nightmare, it really is her behind them, he doesn't even give a rat's ass about it. He hates her for bending her head to the banishment, for driving away, for not running straight to him and for leaving him behind. For not caring how that'd make him feel.

He hates her because his heart skipped hell knows how many beats when he spotted the crappy wagon Rick described abandoned by the roadside. Because he ran there like his life depended on it and found it empty. Because he raked both sides of the adjacent tree line up and down for hundreds and hundreds of feet, not once, not twice, but three times, seeking for weeds ridden roughshod, striving to pick her trail with Beth hot on his heels, looking at him expectantly like he was about to deliver her a late Christmas present, and he came up with nothing. Zero. Nada. Because she wasn't there and all that was left for him to retrieve from the pitted asphalt was that knuckle buster, soaked in dried walker blood, cackling in his face.

The stinging irony of that leaves him rent between the urge to laugh wildly and the bitterness that festers hot tears. Carol goes missing and he comes across with her knife. Such a sick thing to make a pattern of.

Most of all he hates her because she made him feel and identify his feelings. It's her fault that he's in a position to know what this raw pain that quakes his core is. It's love. He hates love. And he hates her. He wants to hate her till his dying breath.

He's in pain, unbearable, devouring pain and slowly yet steadily he contrives ways to shut down, push back the void and anger and ward the suffering off. It's either that or wait tight for this ordeal to kill him. Easy-peasy. He's regressing back to his old self and revels the sensation of security there. Anger is his safe house.

"You think we'll find her again?"

Up to the moment Beth's voice jiggles the silence around them and his eyes shoot up, he hasn't realized how loudly his teeth are grinding, how hard his jaw is clenched. "Dunno."

"Will you look for her?"

"No." Never again.

"Why are you so afraid of what you feel about her?" Beth asks softly, her big beautiful eyes filled with genuine concern.

"I ain't afraid of nothing," he bites out indignantly and then feels the urge to listen to it again to convince himself of the truth these words speak. "Nothing."

Returning her attention back to her diary, Beth chews on her bottom lip and Daryl frowns at himself. How she keeps her shit together stomps him stupid. The girl that shrugged nonchalantly when he broke the news of Zach's death, scaring him shitless, fast-tracked a full emotional recovery back to normal in no time. After breaking down for her father's brutal loss right before her eyes and the agony of never being reunited with her sister, crying and sobbing for hours, she duct-taped her pieces together and forced one foot in front of the other. She's a good companion, focused and composed. From the outside she seems helpless, too much of a damsel in distress, but upon careful examination is a tough cookie. He wants to tell her that she's now being an idiot, that she was stronger and safer when detached, but for whatever reasons, can't bring himself to. Between the two of them, he's the one falling apart right now and it's only too humiliating for his likes.

But it's not Beth's fault. It's hers.

Hers, who left a weapon behind again just to mock him.

"You weren't," Beth asserts casually after a moment with an idle smile, still looking down on a half-written page. "When you people came to our farm, you were the first person I'd ever seen not afraid of anything. But people change. We don't give up, we fight and fight and fight and one day we change. We all do." Her gaze slants up and locks with his withering one for a second, then dives to the blanched knuckles clutching the metallic rings and back to her diary. "You're different now, you're afraid. Of never seeing her again. Of admitting how you feel about her."

"Just drop it, Beth," he grunts under his breath, hoping that the girl won't voice the forbidden name.

Unfazed, Beth closes the notebook in her hands and stares at him intensely. He honestly can't for the life of him figure where the hell she finds the courage to challenge him like that. Problem is Beth's not afraid of him anymore, nobody is, 'cause she turned him into a pussy whipped asshole.

"She knows, you know," she says simply, voice velvety and melodic. "Carol knows that when you care for people, getting hurt is part of the package. You're learning it now, too. That guy you're fighting so hard to save, the guy who wasn't afraid of anything… He doesn't exist anymore."

He hears nothing after 'Carol'. Once her name soars in the space between them it punches him in the gut and the air clogs and hoards in his lungs, hurts. The rest of Beth's speech ebbs away and everything stands stone still, even the cicadas, even the crispy country breeze, as if nature is attuned with the hunter and holds her breath too, patiently waiting for him to suck some oxygen or smother himself trying. He wants to grab that name that blows out of proportion and floats all around him like a nebula of gagging dust and shove it back in the girl's throat, pretend it was never hummed out there.

No way he's sitting there, receiving a pep talk from someone young enough to be his daughter. He wants to lash out the build-up of rage snowballing in his chest, but it's tethered in a painful bubbling under the surface. He's burning up, the veins across his temples throb. His attempt to rid some of the withheld air comes barren and results in a hacking fit, but he still wrestles with it. He's stronger than a haunted name, he has to be; he has that knuckle buster flame charring his palm to stay anchored on the spot.

Nodding at the diary, he hears a groan, unsure who it belongs to. "What are you writin' in there?"

"My thoughts," Beth explains. "I kept a ledger, some sort of prison chronicles. I'm glad I did. My daddy and Maggie are everywhere in here. It helps me feel them close. You're in here too. Wanna hear some bits?"

He lifts his shoulders, snagging the chance to veer his mind off her, off things he can neither undo nor change or control anymore.

"'February 17th. Daryl and Michonne headed out again to track the Governor. He stopped in the common area before leaving to say goodbye to Judith. I can't believe the way he is around her, so tender and sweet, almost like her own father. He's only ever like that around Judith and Carol."

Daryl's nostrils flare, the pointy tip of the blade nipping the hole on his jeans larger.

"February 26th. In the afternoon, I found Carol crying in her cell before story time with the kids. She told me that spending so much time with them reminds her of Sophia. But it could be more, though. She's worrying herself sick every time Daryl is out there for days. She always takes more watch duties, walks the perimeter and looks at the road ahead."

Shuddering, the back of his skull starts banging lightly against the board behind him.

"March 3rd. Michonne and Daryl came back today. They are both exhausted and Daryl said that the Governor's trail went cold. Carol ran up to them first when they arrived. She hugged Michonne and then Daryl. He hugged her back and I've never seen him hug anyone back. She loves him and maybe he loves her, too."

Ain't Beth's glass half full? What does she know? His howling mind berates upon him angrily, in desperate need of this anger to tower and exterminate every resisting voice while the girl leafs through the pages, seeking for another entry with his name.

"March 10th. Michonne left alone this time. A bunch of us walked her out of the fence. I'm worried about her. She seems obsessed with getting revenge and can't move on. Daryl and Carol were glancing at each other. It's not like Daryl to give up after just two months. Maybe part of the reason he quit is Carol. Whatever it is, she's happy. I've never seen her so happy."

The 'part of the reason' snippet grabs him in a chokehold. Beth didn't get that one right either. She should have gone with 'every reason'.

"March 21st. Judith woke up early today and I had to run to the kitchen and prepare her formula. I stomped into Carol and Daryl sitting there and talking quietly over coffee. They do that every morning before tending to their daily chores. I don't know why but there's something so romantic about this it blows my mind away."

Vomit claws up into his mouth, the acerbic taste grates the back of his throat. He's sick. He wants to keel over on all fours and puke his stomach, lungs and heart out, free himself from everything that hurts. It's that name that pokes his sanity. 'Carol' again and again, six times in a row.

"April 15th. They make each other better. Isn't that what love is supposed to do? He helps her grow stronger and she helps him soften and open up. He's blind if he can't see it."

"'nough."

Beth gazes up at him dejectedly. "This is who you are now. You have to save who you are, not who you were. Who you were… What does it matter anymore?"

Wrong again. It does matter. The man he used to be can save him, can pull him out of the gutter. "She drove away," he barks, desperate to cling to his anger like it's the last handhold dangling from the handrail he's gliding full throttle. "Rick kicked her out and she drove away. Like it was his fuckin' call to make! She should've come back. She just didn't want to."

"I think she was just afraid of you."

The blade jabs ferociously in a wooden slat next to him, the vibrating violence of the movement skins the tissue between his fingers. "I ain't ever-"

"I know," Beth cuts his tantrum off, hands upturned in a placating gesture. "I know. She'd never think you'd hurt her. But your rejection would be harder to take than Rick's. I'm saying that she probably thought you'd side with him and she couldn't go through that."

A switch flips and he's startled, the whir of spinning wheels constantly gaining speed echo deafeningly in his head. He hasn't considered Beth's interpretation and it sounds outrageously more plausible than he's willing to negotiate now that his walls are all up.

"Bullshit."

"I was pissed at you," Beth confides gently. "When you went off with Merle, I was pissed at you. Carol wasn't. She told me that you have your code and this world needs men like you."

Plucking the knuckle buster out, he squirms nervously, breaths convulsed, ragged, each one of them a war on its own.

He's never asked, still avoids reverently every conversation about the hitting-the-road-with-Merle-and-without-goodbyes matter. He's never dared to let that info flood in, how Carol reacted to his leaving with his brother. The tears, the pain, the disappointment; he suspects they were all there, but doesn't want to know a damn about it. Somehow, despite the unanswered question marks, it's always easier this way. He didn't even bring her up during that brawl. Glenn asked what he wanted them to tell her and he just said she'd understand, he took it for granted.

The unconditional understanding she always bestowed upon him makes him feel like an asshole now. He knows this amount of acceptance isn't self-evident and certainly not granted effortlessly because that's precisely what he doesn't want to offer back now. An icebreaker stabs on the hardened shell of his heart, smashing it to shards.

Wheezing an inward breath, Daryl averts his gaze and heaves to lever the overflowing emotion in check, blaming Beth's stubborn head for his stinging eyes. "You're a kid," he mutters. "You dunno jack shit about it."

"I ain't a kid and I believed her. I still do. She understood you. She helped me understand you, too."

His hands tremble and the knuckle buster slips from his fingers, thumping on his lap, the blade and his belt buckle clank at the contact. Carol's name is drumming in his ears and he's panting like a wounded beast.

He left, yes, but he came back for her. Maybe he would have for the rest of the group eventually, but she was the catalyst that triggered his return after only the couple of days he and Merle spent fending for themselves in the wild. Because the first night he almost felt like a little boy lost in the woods, afraid of the pitch blackness engulfing him. He stayed awake all night long, wondering if somewhere far away, she was doing the same.

Carol doesn't know that.

She was the reason he didn't go back to the prison to say goodbye. Because how the fuck was he supposed to say goodbye to her? She would never let go without a fight and why would he do the last thing he wanted to do in this world?

Carol doesn't know that either.

And it's even worse than that. He left because of her. He saw a way out with Merle, grabbed it and held on to it like it was a lifeline. He knew there was something powerful brewing between them. He also knew whatever it was it meant approaching a slippery slope, leading gradually but inexorably to disaster. And it scared the shit out of him, feeling that his life depended on her. He could have fought harder about his brother joining their group, impose his presence to everyone no matter what, just like he finally did, but he didn't even try. He chickened out and refused to spend a sheer thought to her, just turned his back and marched away. Because he was afraid she really loved him. And he was petrified he might actually love her back, with a fire that could burn them both inside out.

Carol has no idea.

More than six months later, she still doesn't know any of this. And yet he was dead on about her back then. She understood, truly, deeply understood. Blood was a calling Dixons couldn't ignore. She granted him that absolution, an all-encompassing forgiveness when he didn't even bother to apologize. She didn't judge him, just accepted him, did exactly what he's denying her now.

By what right is he condemning her? What did he ever give her to stand up and fight for? He's always been Rick's henchman, fallen blindly in line with him even when his crazy stumbling around madness got Merle killed, he's never brought up one single objection to him. She doesn't know he did it for her. She probably thinks she did them both a favor by driving away.

A hand shoots up and kneads his neck, vaulting at the kickback of the erratic pulse hammering beneath and failing to shake the chains that suffocate him off.

"She's probably dead by now."

"She's stronger than you give her credit for and you know it," Beth counters conclusively. "You're just afraid."

"I ain't-"

The words halt dead on their tracks –he can't lie again. Lying to Beth is one thing, lying to himself is an entirely different story. Beth is right, he knows she's right. The truth is there, breathing hard on his face, unrelenting, uncompromising, glaring at him. He really is afraid, with a kind of fear he's never experienced before, one that slaughters him. He's afraid that he's lost her for good this time. He's afraid that he won't see her again, that he won't get a chance to right the wrongs, that part of what happened, a huge part of it, the biggest, is on him. He's terrified of how lonely and scared he knows she is. He's terrified of all the things he doesn't know. If she's holed up somewhere safe, if she's cold at nights, if she sleeps at all, if she remembers to eat, if she cries, if she thinks of him, if she misses him, if she blames him, if she waits for him to fetch her back.

Carol is alive. It's not hope or assumption, it's not an educated guess; it's knowledge. The sun rises and sets, the earth spins and Carol is alive. That invisible string that links their hearts, pinning them in an inescapable orbit towards each other, would've been cut if she was dead. But the string is there, tight and palpating, pulling him to where he's supposed to be.

"You're right," he drawls huskily. "Carol's out there."

All it takes is for his lips to curl around the shape of her name and a warmth pumps across his chest, these rotting organs his body's been rejecting for days as if they're incompatible transplants fall back into place. An onslaught of adrenaline whooshes over his bloodstream and suddenly he leaps on his feet, the knuckle buster clutched in his hand.

"I gotta find her."

Hope you liked it! That's definitely how I want things to play out :)