AN: hey I lost all steam on this one, so I'm going to end it. This is the last chapter I'm gonna mark it complete.

I do not own or profit from The Walking Dead

Chapter 7

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"My brother's working I called a cab." He said.

"Oh." She turned to walk toward the car then stopped and turned. "Andrea is taking Sophia to a water park in the next state. They are going to be gone for three days. Wanna...wanna come over?" She laughed as she spoke again "we can get sick together?"

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He had gone over, and every week after that. Daryl had fought against it. Every step of the way. He'd fought against Carol's loving nature. She was caring and kind and everything he'd never known he'd wanted. He'd never known how much he'd wanted affection throughout his life, until it had been freely offered. He craved her presence, and in the beginning that had terrified the hell out of him.

He didn't need anyone, but he was starting to need her, and there was no guarantee, that she wouldn't leave. No guarantee she wouldn't leave. Despite her never ending positivity, she was sicker than him. Not that it was a competition. Just as his feelings seemed to grow, so did his incessant worry over her survival.

So he rebelled against it, trying to build walls around his heart, to emotionally protect himself. Until the day, four weeks after their weekly visits started she didn't show up for her treatment.

He told himself she was fine, as the hours ticked by at a sickeningly slow speed. He told himself he was being paranoid, as he made his way to his truck. He cursed his own stupidity as he drove to her house. He prayed she was alright as he rang her bell.

She was so pale when she'd opened the door, but her smile, her smile had spread across her face when she'd seen him. "Daryl, I'm sorry I was going to text you so you wouldn't worry. My blood work was not so hot this week, they moved my chemo a few days."

He stood there nodding like an idiot. Until his hands could no longer control themselves, he pulled her to him. Burying his face in her neck he'd held her so closely.

Andrea had Sophia, so she'd brought him in, they'd ended up in her bed. He absolutely was not a snuggler, but she wasn't well enough for more than a few shared kisses, and his own treatment was hitting him hard. So they had slept, safe in each other's arms.

She was everything then. He met Sophia and they spent all the time they possibly could together. She celebrated when, he was given the all clear of being cancer free. He'd known that was coming.

For him being sick was a detour on the road of his life. An annoying pause in life. For her it was hurtling full speed towards a washed out bridge and hoping she could make the jump; landing safely on the other side.

Two months later, he sat by her bed, in the hospital as she fought of an aggressive pneumonia. They'd increased her treatment, annihilating as a side effect her immune system. She'd been asleep for awhile, struggling with every breath, as he held her hand he ran his fingers over her hand, over and over tracing a pattern on her skin. His voice was hoarse, with unshed tears, when he spoke.

"Everything in me, is telling me to run. I'm such a pussy, I've always been so scared to get hurt. But I can't run this time,...because I love you. I can't lose you too." He'd whispered to the silent room, when her hands had squeezed his softly.

She was awake, eyes shinning, lips smiling around the tube that was helping her breathe. She couldn't speak, but he saw it in her eyes. She loved him too.

She survived to fight, to fight through another round of treatment, to live, to flourish. To deal with his excessive nagging and over protectiveness, lord he thought Merle had been bad. It was nothing compared to him, but she never minded, she seemed to revel in his affection. To soak it up like it was sunshine in the midst of her cloudy days.

He'd asked her to marry him the day she went into remission, they'd married two weeks later. He would be forever grateful for fate or whatever it was that had guided his life, that sent them on the same path, sitting beside his soulmate in a living room that he'd assumed would start the worst days of his life, he couldn't have been more wrong. Happiness had been just around the corner, or in his case the next lazy boy chair.

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So, sorry, this wasn't the ending I had planned but I just did not want to leave it unfinished.