I had intended this to be a oneshot, a short look at the possibilities of Rick developing feels for Carol...

And hell, it started spiraling,

So here's Part 1.

Enjoy the Carick-juice, and remember: I'm just playing with dolls. I don't own anything and I don't have any money to give to those who do!

It was early one morning when the realization hit him, an epiphany that sent him reeling so far backwards that he spent his entire watch with a pounding headache.

She was up with Judith, grinning wide as his daughter attempted to hold the bottle herself, with Carol merely propping it in place with a single finger. Rick nodded to her in greeting, and she stood from her place on the stairs to peer down at him, displaying the baby's growing strength further,

"She's gonna be a stubborn one…"

He smirked as he approached the steps, taking them slow as not to wake the sleeping block with the metallic rattling,

"She already is."

Carol took a single step down to meet him, shifting the girl in her arms as she proffered Judith up to him with a gentleness that could only come from a mother. Carol knew that he was up at the ungodly hour to relieve Hershel of watch duty, but she seemed to tell him without words that he could wait a few minutes longer.

That his little girl needed him.

Rick inhaled as he gathered Judith in his arms, and Carol took the near-empty bottle from the garbling child and made to step down past him. He shifted to the side, she slipped past, and without even considering what it was or what it meant, he did something that would have him questioning himself for the rest of the day. And perhaps far longer.

Steadying Judith with one arm, he shot a hand out to halt Carol's descent.

"Thank you."

She smiled at him, confused.

She wasn't the only one.

"For what?"

When he leaned forward, sliding his hand onto her shoulder to tug her closer, he could feel her body freeze for a half-second in time before he bent in and kissed her hair.

"Just…everything."

Carol gaped at him for a moment, blue eyes ghosting over his face and Rick felt his breath seize in his lungs.

What did he even mean by that?

By any of it?

She merely nodded in response, smiling down at the baby before dipping her head to make her way down to rinse out the bottle. He watched her, settling himself down onto one of the steps as his fingers absently played with those of his daughter. Carol seemed unaffected by his…gratitude, emerging from one of the storage rooms and heading back his way.

He frowned, remembering that she was bunking with Daryl now, and he quickly stood back up to awkwardly maneuver his way to the side once again. Carol passed, glancing at him with a small, hidden grin,

"Gonna go on back to bed, if you don't mind-?"

He fumbled for a moment, shaking his head so fast that he almost lost his sense of direction on the stairs.

"No, I got her. Hershel'll be in soon and I'll put her back to bed."

She nodded down at him from behind the rail, fingers sliding along the metal.

Because her fingers were suddenly something he noticed?

"Okay. Goodnight…or, good morning." She laughed at herself and he almost snorted.

"Yeah."

She walked away, down the second tier and slipped into the darkness of Daryl's cell.

And that's when he tilted his head back, raised a hand to probe his aching temples, and groaned at the silence. A squirming Judith babbled in response, and Rick chuckled sardonically at himself.

"Judy, Daddy's gotten himself into trouble."

Dawn broke with him leaning face-first against one of the interior fences, pressing his forehead into the linked metal, willing away the steady thump, thump, thump of a headache from hell.

A single Walker dared to wander along the outer yard, its flesh so rotted that it struggled to keep upright.

He eyed it absently.

It could wait a few more minutes before meeting its final end.

Rick shifted, groaning, turning around to lean on his back and as he fingered the fence with one hand and tapped a machete against his thigh with the other, his eyes hovered along the gate just to the right of him, its memory taunting and cruel.

He remembered the look on her face when she realized Daryl wasn't among the returning party, the pleading, desperate panic the she shot right at him as if he was the only person who could understand what she was feeling and why.

And damn it all, when he thought back, he knew it was that need to reach out, pull her into him, comfort and hold her that started this….

Whatever it was.

And what was it?

What was she?

Pushing from the metal he resumed his walk towards the gate, the Walker taking notice of his movement and making a pathetic attempt to stagger his way.

Carol was…

Carol was something special.

She had always been there, from the first day he set foot at the quarry, and he remembered, even now, the kindness she showed him. She was strong, even then, although it certainly wasn't a strength she was aware of at the time. She had suffered, more than even he had, the abuse of domestic violence and the meekness it set into her for so long, and then the worst possible kind of pain: the death of a child.

She could have given up back on the farm, buried into herself and just died, something he himself nearly did when Maggie and Carl came trudging out of the prison that terrible, wonderful afternoon with Judith in tow.

But she didn't. She hadn't given up.

Carol had chosen to live, move on, and she endured.

And maybe that was it.

He had always admired her, admired her kind heart, her inner strength, her enduring spirit. And maybe it was that admiration that was making him…behave this way toward her. Because now, they weren't just friends. They were kindred spirits. Rick saw her will to live and felt connected to it, because it was something he needed to hold on to.

So he wouldn't give up himself.

Rick nodded against the pain in his temples, pleased with his self-clarification.

Breathing a bit easier, he reached out with the machete to drag it along the fence, the loud clacking drawing the Walker closer, closer, until it was within reach of the gate.

Already pushing it open, he slipped through and thrust the weapon into the corpse's face, the softened bones of its skull providing no resistance as the blade sank deep and the body dropped.

Closing the gate and locking it, Rick turned to head further into the yard, his time on watch nearly over.

By the time he reached the block, his headache was gone.

The rest of the morning he kept mostly to himself, dozing in his cell to catch up on much-needed sleep. Hershel was up with Glenn, tending to the older residents of their home. Rick knew that somewhere in the block Daryl was up and taking the security of the prison into his own hands, probably assigning the afternoon watch duties.

He blinked at the grey ceiling of his cell as he attempted to jerk himself awake, the smell of lunch being prepared telling him he'd spent far longer than he'd intended sleeping.

And then he heard the soft gargling of his daughter, the deepening tone of Carl's voice, and then a laugh, soft and happy and boring into his muscles to electrify him into full consciousness.

A second later, the unbelievable sound of Daryl chuckling along.

His skin bristled and Rick felt something in his gut drop.

"Damn."