AN: This is a short multi chapter fic that was requested by an anonymous person on Tumblr. The whole thing has been planned out and should be approximately seven chapters in length. I had two "short fic" requests that I've been sitting on, so I decided to try and do those as I'm working my way back into writing after having been too busy for a while. I'm always happy to fill prompts whenever you have them (and when I feel like it's something I can fill), so let me know if you have anything you'd like to see.

Other WIPs aren't going anywhere. These are just short fics to get me going again.

As always, I own nothing from the Walking Dead. All I own are my original characters and story lines.

I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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The final words had been spoken. The last conversations were had. Carol thanked her lawyer, one last time, forcing her smile to appear as genuine as she could. It wasn't his fault that her marriage failed—that both her marriages had failed. It wasn't his fault that she felt absolutely deflated at the moment.

Maybe it was her fault. Maybe it was Daryl's fault. Or maybe it was nobody's fault.

She made her way down the hallway with her lawyer. He mentioned something about a drink. She turned him down, politely declining with the lie that she was going out with a friend, without even hearing the whole invitation. She wanted to go home—to her quiet and empty home that she'd won fair and square in the settlement, even though Daryl would have given it to her at any rate—and she wanted to lick her wounds alone.

She seldom felt very social, but right now she was feeling even less so.

Breathing in the fresh air of the parking lot, Carol dug through her purse and looked for her car keys. She'd gotten her car. He'd gotten his truck. It was fair. She'd wanted everything to be fair. It had really been Daryl who had insisted that she take the house. He could, as he put it, get along without it. The house, really, meant more to her than it did to him. For him? The place didn't matter as long as he had a roof over his head. He wasn't sentimental about places and things.

And, maybe, he wasn't sentimental about anything.

Irreconcilable Differences.

It was a nice way of saying that they didn't know what was wrong with their marriage. At least, they didn't know exactly. They couldn't quite put their fingers on what had gone wrong, or really even how long it had been wrong, but there was something there that was keeping them from finishing out their contract until death would part them.

Right up until the end, Carol had thought that maybe they'd turn things around. Maybe, by some miraculous turn of events, they'd find the fortitude to try it again. They'd gather themselves up, dust themselves off, declare that they'd changed their minds, and they'd call the divorce off. It never happened that way though. No matter how often she'd thought it might in the last fourteen months, Daryl had never said that he'd wanted to stop the divorce.

He'd never really made any sort of show at all that he didn't want their marriage to end. The day that Carol had told him that she was tired and that she didn't want to live like this anymore, he'd simply hung his head for a moment, chewed on his lip, and then looked at her and shrugged.

The day that she'd told him that she didn't think that their marriage was worth continuing, at least not as it was, he'd shrugged.

That was how Daryl dealt with most things. He accepted them. And although that was a far cry better than the way her first husband had been—a man who had accepted nothing and who had reacted to everything with his fists—it was still infuriating at times. It wasn't that Carol wanted some huge reaction over everything, but she wanted at least some reaction over some things.

She needed to feel like he even cared whether or not the marriage worked out. And when he'd shrugged the day that she'd said it was over, Carol had felt that he'd given her the answer that she sought.

Nearing her car, keys in hand, Carol saw him. He was standing by his truck, one that he'd bought because it was just as sensible as anything else for them, and he was smoking a cigarette. He was mostly studying the asphalt beneath his shoes, but as Carol neared him, Daryl glanced up and made eye contact with her. She glanced toward her car, considering going straight for the vehicle without even speaking, but finally she turned her steps in his direction instead. She put on a smile for him too, but she didn't try to will the melancholy out of her eyes for him as she had the lawyer.

He had to know her heart was breaking. Even if he felt nothing at all, he had to know that she could barely breathe.

"Guess it'll all be done soon," Daryl said as a way of greeting. Carol swallowed and cringed at the sensation made it feel like there were hot knives lodged in her throat. She nodded and hummed quietly to put some affirmative sound behind her gesture.

"When the papers come through," she said. "That's all we're waiting on now. Our official copies."

Daryl nodded, chewing at his lip.

It was like they had nothing to say to one another. It was like there weren't any words that they could exchange that would add anything to the moment that the silence couldn't give them. There'd only been a few times in their marriage that this had happened. There'd only been a few times that silence seemed like the only thing that either of them could find to say.

Once had been on their wedding day. It was a different silence then. It was a choking silence of absolute happiness and disbelief. Carol couldn't believe that she'd found, after everything she'd been through, a man that was as gentle and wonderful as Daryl. Daryl couldn't believe, or so she'd assumed, that he'd found Carol and found, somehow, the courage to ask her to be his wife. And, maybe, he couldn't believe that she'd said yes.

Another time had been the day that she'd lost the baby. It hadn't been as dramatic, perhaps, as things she'd seen on Lifetime movies about such events in the lives of couples. The little heartbeat that had been there at one appointment wasn't there at the next. It was as simple as that. Daryl had stayed with her and had listened to all the doctor's words as he explained possible reasons, described procedures for her to undergo to make sure all was well, and promised that this didn't mean that they'd never have children. She'd kept herself together as well, as best as she could, and then they'd gone home together when it was all done—in absolute silence. There had been nothing to say. There was nothing that either of them could do for the other. There weren't any words, and the doctors and nurses had proved that with their words, that could do anything to help their situation. They'd simply never spoken about it. Not then, and not later.

Looking back, maybe that had been the beginning of the end for them. One thing that Daryl Dixon had been passionate about, at least back then, was having a family. He wanted a perfect family with a chance to be a perfect father. He hadn't expected to see all of that end in a sterile environment and to go home to face the fact that his dream simply might not ever come true—and hadn't ever come true.

There was no reason to dwell on the reasons, though, that things went wrong. All that remained was the fact that, somewhere, they had gone wrong.

The final silence between them had been the long one that had filled the house after he'd simply shrugged over Carol's declaration that she didn't think they were worth saving. A shrug and a simple declaration of "alright" and Daryl had left the house. He hadn't returned until close to bedtime—and he hadn't returned to the bed. Carol had spent the night in almost absolute silence. The sound of her own bouts of sobbing was all that had kept her from believing that she'd been struck suddenly and completely deaf.

Two days later, without too much conversation between them, Daryl had moved out of the house. He'd found a place to rent and Carol had accepted that he was as done with the marriage as she had decided that she was. He wasn't fighting for it, and she had no fight left in her. It was done.

And she'd only doubted that a few times.

All of them had been spur of the moment and spontaneous occurrences. He'd ended up at the house to discuss something. She'd dropped by his place to bring something. Whatever the circumstances, it hadn't mattered. They'd gotten swept up in something—something that seemed to just happen—and they'd parted company again in the morning sputtering excuses and declarations that it wouldn't happen again. Each of those times, Carol had secretly harbored the hope that it would happen again. But it wasn't the sex that she'd been crossing her fingers for, it was the hope that the same momentary flash of passion that Daryl seemed to feel in the heat of the moment would be something that would bleed over to the rest of their lives. Each time she expected him to simply stand up to her for a moment and say, in no uncertain terms, that he didn't want the marriage to end. He didn't want to leave the bed, or the house, or whatever the case may be. He wanted her and he wanted them to be together.

He'd stand for no more of this ridiculous talk of divorce.

But it never happened that way.

The last time—just a short time before they'd gotten the appointment for this final meeting with their lawyers—Carol had realized that it was really done. Daryl wasn't standing up for this. He enjoyed the sex, and deep down somewhere she knew he still loved her at least as much as he ever had, but he wasn't going to say that the marriage was worth saving. He wasn't going to say that he wanted them to fight for whatever they'd had in the beginning that had made them think it was worth getting married in the first place.

He wasn't going to ask her to give their marriage another chance.

"I guess you're doing alright?" Carol asked, feeling like she had to force herself to break the silence. "You're—comfortable? In your place?"

Daryl hummed and chewed at his cuticle. It was a habit she'd tried to get him to break more than once, but it had never taken. The action was too deeply ingrained in him now.

"Comfortable enough," Daryl said. "You know—roof don't leak. Plumbing's indoors. It'll do."

Carol swallowed. The words sounded like a perfect summation of how he was about everything in life.

"I have some extra linens and things," Carol said. "I'll never use them all. Some of the dishes? There's enough there to furnish a place for you."

"Don't wanna put you out," Daryl responded quickly.

"You won't put me out," Carol assured him. "I'll never use all of it. It's better that someone use it. It'll save you the money that you'd spend trying to replace it."

Daryl shrugged.

"Whatever," he said. "I mean, sure, if you're sure you can spare it. I can—pick it up?"

Carol felt her stomach sink. Maybe it was the fact that she knew the marriage was really over that was making her feel sick at the moment. Maybe it was the fact that she knew that their conversation was about to end, and that she'd really have no reason to stay there any longer, even though she wanted to remain in his presence. Maybe it was the knowledge that she'd see him again, coming to pick things up from the house, but that things would never be like they once were.

Or maybe it was just the simple realization that nothing in her life would ever be like she'd dreamed it could be. This marriage was just another one of those things that proved that to her. And maybe it was her own fault.

Maybe she'd wanted him to be something he wasn't. Maybe she'd wanted him to be something that he simply couldn't be.

Carol sucked in a breath to calm herself and accepted, in that moment, that things were simply what they were. There was no use fighting it any longer. It was time to give up. Daryl, it seemed, had given up long ago.

"I'll get them together tonight or tomorrow," Carol said. "You can call me when you want to come by and pick them up. The number's the same."

Daryl hummed at her and snubbed out the cigarette on the asphalt beneath his shoe.

"Yeah," he said. "Take care?"

Carol nodded and offered him a half smile, not even fighting her lips to curve the rest of the way against the natural frown that was forming on her face.

"You too," Carol said. "Take care."

She turned and quickly walked to her car. He didn't feel anything at all about this, so Carol wasn't going to let him see how much it was killing her. Even if she couldn't really feel it, she could pretend to be like him. She could pretend that she just didn't care. She could pretend that today didn't mark the end of the marriage. Their marriage, it seemed, had ended a long time ago.

It was time for Carol to put it to rest.