(A/N: Wow, it's been a long, long loooooong time and that makes me sad lol. Unfortunately my life has been so busy I've barely had time to breathe let alone do anything fun like write, and my work schedule is about to get about three times as hectic as of Monday and that makes me really bummed too.

Having said that, I can't NOT spark this back up again. Season two has inspired me so much (especially last week's horrendously wonderful episode) so even if it kills me I will get this reworked and progressed.

To help me get back into the swing of things I am tweaking it a bit, basic plot stays the same but it's all had a once over and there's minor parts that will be different and different wording and but if you followed it when it was "At the End of Everything" it shouldn't seem all that different…and hopefully you all like I just as well.

I'm keeping the old version up for a little while, a week or so, so that people can be redirected but after that it will vanish for good so make sure you get alerted for this one as well. I'm not sure when I'll be posting a brand spanking new chapter but I'm hoping to have everything that's already in existence edited by a weeks time and then go from there!

I do not own any Walking Dead characters or events….just like I unfortunately do not own Norman Reedus…I could speak at length how bitter I am about this but that's beside the point.

If you don't like OC's then you probably should not read as it will continue to be a Daryl / OC fic because I like to live vicariously through my fictional characters.

I adore reviews, they inspire me to write and update quickly. I'm also open to constructive criticism so whatever you've got lay it on me)

Prologue:

Everyone likes to think about the end of the world every now and then. Whether it's due to morbid curiosity or whether it's an attempt to be prepared and plan for catastrophe emergency is inconsequential when it comes down to it. Thinking about something and putting it into action are two very different things, and meager stockpiles or half cocked emergency survival plans tend to go right out the window when speculation shifts quickly from plain theory into jarring reality. Even with the greatest imagination in the world, no one could ever deduce what it would be like to have everything they had ever known and every little comfort available ripped away in a split second. No one can predict what survival after the fall of civilization would really be like. More over prediction is mute when the sheer magnitude of infectious outbreak that hits is far beyond anyone's day-to-day rumination. After all, outbreak was one thing, but something that sets the dead back up on their feet, hungry and running rampant in the street was another thing altogether.

Call it shock, a lack of understanding of the gravity of the entire situation, or maybe even willful denial, but at first at face value the walkers and the entire state of things as they were seemed little more than a bad dream. Power was cut and ready communication was at once a thing of the past. People outside of the city, some of which who had yet to have a face to face meeting with a walker, struggled to get to the refugee center and some semblance of purported safety. People stuck in major cities scrambled to get beyond its limits and escape not only the walkers but the mass cull that had apparently been enacted to bring an end to the outbreak alike. Stranded and confused, fearful flocks of people were coming apart at the proverbial seams en masse.

Panic, once set in, was the enemy just as much as the walkers were. The walkers brought with them fear, and the swift loss of any and all hope of long-term survival. But hysteria had the habit of changing people in remarkable ways. For the better or for the worse was up in the air, a crapshoot really, and while both were more than possible, in a post apocalyptic landscape for the worse was more likely than not. Moreover, in Ana Leigh's experience, "for the worse" was rapidly becoming the norm.

Four weeks, it had been since she had been on her own and four weeks that had already began to feel like a lifetime. To be fair though, it had already seemed like a lifetime since the outbreak happened. Things had gone from bad to worse in the dark, so to speak, and maybe it had only felt like a lifetime on account not knowing just exactly what was happening. Even then, that wasn't so much the worst of it as much as the lack of support was. People could live with being oblivious much sooner than they could live without the feeling of any reason to believe things would get better; but there was nothing. No survival rations delivered, and no officials to instruct them where to go or how they could best keep safe. Everyone was left on their own to scratch together some foolhardy plan if they could manage. Something, anything to get them through the days that spanned before the whole ordeal was resolved and that was if it even would be.

The little stretch of countryside Analeigh had only ever known as a safe warm, area to call home had become little more than a ghost town surprisingly fast. Some neighbors, she was certain, joined up in droves and made hasty evacuations while others barricaded holed up in their homes as best as they could. Too scared to run, or to take a chance and get the hell out of dodge, it didn't seem like it mattered anymore. Survivors were stronger together and there was safety in numbers for certain, but how much promise could that hold when they were outnumbered by the dead already anyways?

Most days Analeigh could hardly tell if she, or anybody else for that matter, was fighting for life or just putting on a brave face while waiting to die.

Staying out of city stood to reason as a better way to keep alive, that much was in her favor at first. The suburbs and the country land weren't nearly as swarmed by the dead as major urban areas were by the day. Instead of hundreds to fight off or avoid, on a regular basis there were but a dozen at the most on a bad day. Even on a bad day the countryside could almost be considered safe from dawn to dusk and as things were, almostsafe had come to be the only thing anyone could really hope for.

That being said, lingering in small towns and country glens was something not without downfall. Personal stock had the habit of dwindling more quickly than planned out and expected and in small towns, what merchants were available in proximity got ransacked and run through in record speed. Being out of food and water wasn't immediately a problem solved by breaking into a neighbor's home and pilfering whatever was needed. Running out of supplies, if they were absolutely necessary, meant risking a trip to the city to scavenge whatever one might find as fast as humanly possible. The more trips successfully made by greater amounts of people meant more trips made farther, and farther in search of resources to be had.

It was running out of supplies, and a forced trip for more that had left Analeigh on her own and In irony, it was only fitting she stay in the now abandoned city that had left her in a similar way.

Thinking of herself was much easier for her than thinking about what had really happened. Thinking of herself as abandoned made it easier for her to put of a wall and pretend like she was really as brave and as strong as she needed to be. That aside, most days all she really wanted to do was collapse in a corner somewhere with knees hugged to her chest, catatonic and just waiting for the walkers to tear her to shreds. Most days it was easier to think about giving up the fight while she had all her senses about her and wasn't parched and half dead of starvation. She was alone in Atlanta, a hotbed of walkers and harsh and dead in it's own right. Bodies littered the streets, and just about everything was smashed, burned or ransacked to no end, a cold empty city that would quite literally eat her alive. There was little chance of her making it out in one piece and even if she did there was nothing now left for her to live for.

She would have all but convinced herself to give up while she still had the choice if not for the faintest prospect of someone, somewhere bringing everything that had unfolded to an end. It was a pipe dream, and a foolish one at that but maybe, just maybe, if Analeigh could will herself to pull through a little longer she would see things to the end. Maybe everything would be as it once was, and maybe salvation was closer at hand than anyone knew. Maybe resolution wasn't impossible after all. All it would take to make everything a bad memory was someone willing to try, and maybe there was someone doing just that.

Maybes are a long shot of course, but they were all Analeigh had.

Even then, all of her maybes were almost all gone.