AN #1: Reunion time...

WwW

She swallowed hard, took Mika and Lizzie's hands in her own.

She could see him there, leaning on the door like it was all that was keeping him up. His eyes were wet, with tears of joy or pain she couldn't tell. His shirt was open and chest bandaged, his face swollen and bloody.

Her heart hurt so much to look at him, she almost forgot her fear, her anger. Her betrayal.

She walked around the car, Beth with Judith ahead of her, and he immediately started screaming, yelling and running like a newborn giraffe.

Her stomach lurched, and a half-hearted prayer raced through her thoughts as he came towards her. Oh God, please protect me protect us oh God, please.

But he wasn't even looking at her. He barreled into Beth, clutching his daughter to him as he sobbed and fell to the ground, Judith wrapped up in his arms. She could hear him whispering to her desperately, thanking Beth and Daryl and God for saving his little girl, and then Tyreese when Beth mentioned that it had been him who had found her in the firefight and saved her.

"I'll never leave you. I love you. I love you. I love you, baby. I promise. I promise. I'm so sorry. Oh, God, I'm so sorry."

His words wafted to her softly as she ached, knew firsthand what he must have gone through, imagining his baby cold and not quite dead, alone on concrete among other undead things of which she was one.

She knew it, and so her hand fell from the pistol in her belt.

And then Carl was at the door, and he saw his sister and was crying from joy, and she looked at the little boy she was supposed to protect, looked at Lori's legacy, and her heart warmed, because she believed she could do this, that just maybe, she could do this. She could protect them. She could be that to them.

If Rick would let her, she could. If his anger had waned, if his love for her outweighed the hate…

If, if, if.

wWw

They stayed like that, wrapped around each other, for several minutes before Glenn hobbled out of the house, sweaty and fevered, to investigate.

She smiled, breathed deep at the sight of him as he bear hugged Daryl with a huge grin on his face, then turned to run to Beth, who met him halfway before running into the house to reunite with her sister, crying out her name frantically as she saw her.

And then Glenn locked bleary eyes with her, took her into his arms, and his sickness was heavy in the air as she embraced him, but she didn't care, she didn't care about anything anymore, because they were alive, her family was alive.

"Carol," he croaked. "Oh, God. No one even saw you!"

And just like that, Rick's head swung up and towards her, and her stomach clenched, her hands fidgeting as she held Glenn close to her.

"...Carol?" Rick croaked, looking at her like he couldn't believe his eyes.

She didn't say anything, didn't know if she even could. Glenn moved a little bit away, his grin fading as he saw Rick's confusion.

Her hand dropped to her handgun on instinct.

Daryl must have been watching her, because the second she did he dropped his crossbow, moving slowly towards Rick, his biceps twitching and flexing as he eyed the stand-off between them, no doubt the incident with Ty fresh in his memory.

She looked at him, watched him tentatively as he stared her down.

Her heart was racing, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't say anything because her throat was closed tight, that ungodly ball of tension taking residence there.

He looked at her with something...broken. He wasn't whole, not even as much as he was when he banished her.

Would he kick her out? Would he demand her gone? Would he attack her, or try to? Push his fists into her face until she was unrecognizable? Kick her legs out from under her so he could get on top of her, so he could hurt her, so he could...

She swallowed hard. No. He would never.

She wouldn't let him.

She let her eyes stray for just half a second, saw Carl watching them both from the ground, his hat in Judith's stubby little fingers, fire behind his eyes as he glared at his father, speaking to him silently and darting his eyes between the man and the woman he had come to accept as his surrogate mother.

And then Rick handed the baby off to his son, and stood slowly, shakily, and she took a step back, her heart breaking and her throat burning, tears forming behind her eyes, but she wouldn't let it, she wouldn't let herself be hurt, he wasn't her friend, he had betrayed her, he hated her.

He held his hands up, though, and she saw the shame in his eyes as he realized he needed to do that to set her at ease, to keep her from feeling that she was in danger.

Her chin was quivering, and tears were inevitable. She hated her weakness, hated this part of her she had thought she had left behind, hoped she had.

Her hand dropped from her belt, and her arms swung from her sides.

He took her into him, blubbering like a baby, spewing apologies, holding her head against his neck as he sobbed tears of guilt and self-loathing.

She nodded into him, didn't know what to make of her feelings and her tears, but his heart was hurting and hers hurt, too, because she hated him, but she loved him.

She held onto him for a second more, then let go with a deep breath, drew away from him, wiping her tears and offering a half-smile.

"He told me, Carol." He started, still holding onto her. "I'm so sorry. I didn't... I should have..."

She hushed him, looked back at Carl and Judith, didn't care anymore. Didn't have the energy to care about anything past her promises. And looking at those little ones, their father a broken mess in her arms, she knew she needed to forgive and move on. Knew it wouldn't be hard; she had forgiven a million times before, forgiven someone she had hated. She could forgive one of her best friends.

She could forget.

WwW

She walked through the front door behind Daryl, Lizzie and Mika's hands in hers.

Maggie was curled up on the couch with Beth, and her eyes when she spied Carol were less than friendly.

Her heart ached. Who else had Rick told? Who else would watch her with wary eyes from now on, hatred barely below the surface?

Obviously not Glenn, as immediately after stepping in behind her, he asked what that outburst between her and Rick had been about.

Maggie shook her head at him, so he quieted, but oh, how she needed to get out of here.

There were people she didn't recognize there, and some that she did. Old Mrs. McLeod had made it, as well as Michonne. One of the Governor's soldiers – a nurse – was in a back bedroom with her, sewing up a man who had lost his hand to a walker.

As Rick muttered the words, she fled, immediately, hoping against hope that Michonne had not been told, that she could have one person, one person in solitude to feel comfortable around.

She took her backpack with her, pulling out the arnica leaves as moans echoed through the walls.

She pushed herself through the door swiftly, walking over to help Michonne in restraining the man while the brown-haired nurse struggled to sew up veins, cauterizing as she went with a glowing blade that rested in a bowl of hot coals.

Michonne smiled at her as the man bucked beneath them.

She smiled back at her friend, putting all her weight on the man's chest and arm as his fist clenched and tried to come up and hit her.

"I'm so glad you're here," Michonne almost sang, digging her elbow into the man's groin as he brought a knee up to her face.

He yelped, but stilled.

"Listen, buddy, you keep squirming like this, and I'm going to snip something important," the nurse chastised, obviously done with this man's lack of a pain tolerance.

The man responded with a moan, and Michonne rolled her eyes again.

"Who is this guy?" Carol asked quietly.

Michonne shrugged. "What's your name, dude?"

He whimpered. Then, in a heavy Bama accent, "Eugene."

She scoffed. "Well, Eugene, this is my friend Carol. She once saved a guy who lost his leg with only a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some gauze. You're going to live."

He moaned some more, whined something about just letting him die.

The nurse kept right on sewing and burning, not batting an eyelash at his plea.

"You might want to give him some of those drugs, Carol," she said indirectly, not lifting her eyes from her job at hand. "He hasn't shut up for forty-five minutes, and it looks like he's not going to."

Carol nodded, then lifted a hand to rummage around for the little baggie, before finding it and popping the seal with her teeth, lifting a couple leaves out and shoving them in Eugene's mouth, spewing out instructions as he gagged, putting a forearm over his shoulders to keep him down.

Michonne continued on with her small-talk. "So, how's it been? I don't think you've met Lilly before. The Governor brainwashed her into joining his noble cause."

She paused as Lilly cauterized a small point, and Eugene yelled out as his whole body thrashed.

Lilly looked at Carol with a smile as she held the blade there. "Nice to meet you, Carol."

Carol nodded at her, smiled, breathing hard as she tried to restrain the man below her.

"Lilly and I-" Michonne gasped out, grinding her elbow into his thigh as she held him down, "are soul-sisters, forever sharing the bond of killing that SOB."

Lilly chuckled a little, tossing her knife back into the bowl of sparking coals, picking up her needle and thread and dousing the stump with some more antiseptic.

Carol looked at Michonne incredulously, tried to tell if her black eyes were dilated, if her hands were fidgeting, if she had taken something. Because this Michonne was not the Michonne she knew.

The woman smiled at her again as Lilly chastised the man, threatened to suffocate him with a pillow until he passed out if he didn't shut up, that he needed to get a hold on himself before the house was surrounded with walkers.

He quieted at that. Didn't stop fighting, but at least now he wasn't yelling and moaning.

"So…" Carol started, trying to take it all in. "The Governor's gone?"

Lilly nodded. "Put a bullet through his brain. He won't ever hurt anyone again."

She felt some sort of…relief, at those words. It was settled. Over.

Andrea had been avenged. Merle.

Hershel.

"You got your girls out?" Michonne whispered, not quite looking at her, asking in slight apprehension.

Lilly stiffened at her words, grinded her teeth together.

She had lost her girl.

She knew it, knew it with every inch of her being, could see it in her eyes, the sudden control in her hands and fingers, the only thing that was keeping her from flying into a million pieces.

It had happened recently, that much she could tell, too.

She nodded at Michonne, didn't want to say it out loud, didn't want to rub it in this woman's face that two of her daughters had lived, while hers had not.

Michonne nodded in response, smiled small.

Eugene stopped struggling suddenly, but she knew he wasn't gone because his breath was still coming out in loud huffs.

She and Michonne sighed with relief in tandem, and Michonne enveloped her in a hug as she turned to leave, a member of their newfound lost-child trio.

It was three of them. Three of them who could not protect their babies, had failed them, had put their lives in a man's hands, men who could protect them no better than their mothers, would protect them no better, refused to.

She knew how Andre had died; Michonne had told her that one day, long ago, when Carol had asked her to hold Judith for a second while she fixed a bottle. The fear in her eyes had clued Carol in, and within a week, her suspicions were confirmed when her friend confided in her, told her about her boyfriend and his best friend, how they had been bit but were too high to take care of it.

How, when she found them, her baby was still alive, crying out as his undead father ripped into him.

How she had had to put her baby, her little, tiny baby, down with her deer knife. How she had hacked off the man's jaw and arms with that same knife, had pinned them both to the ground with her sword through their chests as she did. Taken out all her fury on them, refused to let them die for their sins, wanted them to suffer, wanted whatever was left inside them to be stuck in this life. Indefinitely.

And as she remembered this, as her friend left the room to go wash her arms of the sticky blood that was coating everything within a three-foot radius, she understood it all over again, knew that anger, remembered how angry she had been that Ed got out of his guilt, how he got to leave this hell they lived in. How, in smashing his skull in, she really wished she could let him walk. Let him become one of those…things.

Lilly watched warily as she worked.

She helped stitch the man up, brought out her blood-clotting herbs and worked side-by-side with this woman, this woman that she knew would be her sister in much the same way Michonne was, how Lori had been.

They would share this.

wWw

AN #2: I hope you liked it! Please leave a review if you feel up to it, it means so much to me. : )