Carol Miller was not the kind of girl who cut classes, or got F's on tests, or said swears, and she certainly never came across as anything but kind and caring. She was what her teachers liked to refer to as, 'a quiet, conscientious worker' - she helped at school bake sales, painted sets for the school plays, always tutored anyone in need and seldom raised her voice above a whisper. The better half of her high school career had been spent staying in the good graces of her teachers, while avoiding the limelight and flying under the radar of her peers. Carol Miller was invisible, at least, that's what she thought. Hardly any of her peers knew her as anything other than 'the nice girl who tutors people' or, perhaps, 'the girl who bakes the good cookies every year'.

Until one fateful gym class, when the clumsy mishandling of one of the school's new basketballs resulted in a new nickname for her -

'The girl who hit Daryl Dixon in the face with a basketball'.

Watching as he held his bleeding nose at the other end of the gym, Carol felt her legs wobble and the color drain from her face. He was going to kill her, she was certain of it.

"You're dead." Andrea joked, her voice light and casual as she surveyed the scene. Coming to stand alongside the two, Michonne gave Carol a small pat on the shoulder.

"I think he's more scared of you than you are of him," Michonne offered, her tone pensive. "I mean, you did just hit him in the face with a basket ball." Carol glared at her two friends and rolled her eyes. It was an old game of back-and-forth they played often, joking at each others expense in some attempt to add levity to the situation, however bleak it looked but as Carol squared her shoulders and walked across the gym, she felt her stomach sink.

Daryl whispered a string of incoherent curses under his breath as he clutched his nose, which was steadily bleeding from the impact of the ball. He knew the girl that had thrown it, her name was Carol and in third grade he had developed a small crush on her after she shared her lunch with him. In more recent years he had stolen from her stall at the bake sale, and had seen her walk to school a handful of times with her friends, but that was about it.

"I'm so sorry! Here, look at me and I-" Daryl looked up from the ground to see Carol standing before him, a handful of balled up tissues in her palm , she became momentarily distracted in surveying his injury and Daryl took the opportunity to snatch the tissues from her.

"Can do it myself." He grumbled, he could taste the metallic taste of his blood as it leaked into his mouth. Carol glanced around the gym, where everyone had stopped mid-game to watch the duo.

"Maybe we should take you to the school nurse…" Carol said quietly, in the background she could hear the booming voice of her P.E teacher telling the class to get back to their game and quit stickybeaking.

"I've had worse." Daryl remarked dryly, looking down at the bloody tissue and grimacing.

"Well you can't just walk around with blood dripping out your nose all day." Carol said, a little more forcefully than she had intended. She had a point, but Daryl didn't want to go to the nurse, especially with his whole class watching as Tiny-Carol-Miller escorted him - the very same Tiny-Carol-Miller who had injured him in the first place - it was like a double shot of embarrassment.

"Said 'm fine." He raised his voice slightly, lifting the tissue from his nose, only to have a drop of blood fall on the toe of his left boot. Carol frowned. "Jesus fuck!" He shouted at a sudden twinge of pain when he touched his nose in the wrong place.

"It's my fault you're hurt in the first place, please, let me take you to the nurse." Daryl heard her voice go soft and he could feel her puppy eyes on him. She was upset she had hurt him, and somewhere inside himself some third-grade version of Daryl was upset by that. So he huffed (which resulted in a new mouthful of blood) and prepared to have Carol escort him to the school nurse.

He didn't know it yet, but from that moment forward he became 'the boy who got hit by Carol Miller's basketball'.

A.N.: What? Have? I? Done?

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