Author's Note:

This is set between episodes 9x15 and 9x16 (spoiler alert!), expanded out and taking off from canon from a moment in the Sneak Peek preview, because there is no way the show is going to give us as happy of an ending for Caryl as I'm about to. And also because it is A GREAT MOMENT.

Summary of the preview, if you haven't seen it: Carol says she can't look at Lydia without thinking of Henry. Daryl asks what she sees when she looks at him. She's surprised and responds that she sees him, then links arms and Ezekiel looks back just in time to see them walking arm in arm together. I am afraid to hope of what the show might be hinting toward with that moment, so I'm going to write my own version.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter 1: What She Sees

Her feet hurt. From the cold and the broken, unforgiving pavement. Carol appreciated it, because it drew her attention away from the pain in her chest. It shouldn't be so physical, grief, but this time, it had hit her like a hard flu. Henry. And right after, the pipes going out, the lack of food, the loss of the Kingdom.

She was a fallen queen, and she felt like one.

Daryl's dog trotted by her and her eyes followed it. The animal was a blessing, for all of them, but then Daryl had always done that. Found little ways to keep their group going, so naturally she wasn't sure he realized he was doing it. When her daughter was missing, he'd brought a flower stuffed in a forlorn beer bottle, like that was the only hope left he could scrape up…and he gave it all to her.

"It's a Cherokee Rose."

She could hear his voice still, so young and tentative, telling her the story of the Cherokee Rose and the bereft mothers on the Trail of Tears. People marching along away from their stolen homes, away from the graves of their children. She stumbled and an acrid bitterness filled her throat. It was what they were doing, right now, but there wasn't a rose in sight.

But then again, this wasn't their first trail of tears.

Daryl's footsteps whispered behind her like they were just another memory. They'd wandered the roads together, in that first frigid winter after they lost Sophia and the farm. They'd wandered the roads after the prison and before Alexandria. Starving, for most of it. Grieving for lost children. Walking toward people they hadn't even met yet, that they didn't know they would love. That they didn't know they'd someday grieve.

Carol's throat tightened until it was too narrow for tears. She had a whole new understanding for the phrase, "Rest in Peace." The peaceful ones were the dead. Sophia was lucky, because she hadn't had to go through everything that was coming next.

Carol never thought she would have lived so long herself. She shouldn't have, hadn't ever deserved to, and yet she always did, somehow.

Her eyes fixed on Lydia's slumped shoulders. The girl was weak, skittish. It was a bad trade, Henry's life for hers. He'd had so much hope and energy, would have made a great leader someday, or maybe even more important, a great plumber. He'd fixed those pipes a thousand times and they hadn't lasted a full week without him. It was like he was the real heart of the Kingdom and once he was gone, so was it.

"You know, Henry wanted her here. When no one else did." Daryl's gruff voice came from just behind her shoulder, like the voice of her better nature. "She's a good kid."

There was no reproach in his voice, but she didn't miss the appeal. He'd cared enough about the girl to claim her as one of them, and he wanted Carol to claim her, too. He had a good pure heart, Daryl did. But Carol didn't. And she couldn't forgive as easily as he did.

"Every time I look at her, I just see him."

She could feel his eyes on her. Watching, like they had after Sophia's funeral. Like they had in Atlanta. He could sense it when she was hurting most. He hesitated, looked at the ground.

"What do you see when you look at me?"

She was so surprised to hear him say it, she actually glanced over. There was guilt under his words, a perfect match to her own, but there was more than that, too. Something in his tone…it was like he was voicing the one thing they never talked about. It was like he was finally asking if she wanted more, too.

Even if she was wrong, and he was just about his guilt, the answer was the same.

"I see you," she assured him, gently chiding. That would never change. He should know it, after all these years.

She tucked her hand into his arm, the rough wool of his new poncho tickling her knuckles. It was easier for the next few steps, walking with him like it didn't matter which road they were on this time. What they were running from and what they were running to. It felt like she already knew, like she'd flipped ahead and knew there was a next chapter full of bright sunlight and piles of ripe tomatoes and laughing children. There was always a next chapter, no matter how many times she'd tried to slam the book closed.

Ezekiel twisted on his horse to look back, and even when his gaze paused on them, Carol didn't loosen her grip. She used to hide all her relationships from Ed so he'd feel important. She'd never deigned that kind of control over her life to Ezekiel, and he'd never asked for it.

After a longer moment than usual, he turned back around, allowing them what privacy there was on the road.

It was easier when she held onto Daryl, so she allowed herself one step, two, three, before she turned her attention to what she knew he needed from her.

"Connie told me everything you did for Henry. At the Hilltop, and when you got him back from Alpha." She smiled softly at Daryl. "She wrote it all out in tiny little print, used up her entire little notebook. It's her only way to speak, when she's away from her interpreter. You could see how hard it was for her to hand it over, but she did it anyway. For you."

Daryl huffed. "Shouldn'ta wasted a page. Didn't matter. None of it meant shit, in the end." His fist clenched on the strap of his crossbow.

Carol had gotten her another notebook from the Kingdom's precious hoard of paper. The smile that dawned on Connie's face had let Carol know that she hadn't thought there was another notebook left within 50 miles when she used up hers explaining Daryl's heroics in taking on Alpha's lieutenant and her whole army. How he wouldn't even let Connie come and help when he went in to rescue Henry.

Carol squeezed his arm, her thumb rubbing down his bicep. Dead hard, just like his whole body had been the whole time she'd known him. Sometimes bonier, sometimes thicker with well-fed muscle, but all his softness stayed hidden deep inside.

"It's so comforting to take the blame," she said quietly. "Both of us looking for every little choice we made wrong. Pretending it's our fault because we want to believe we're in control."

Daryl's steps slowed as he looked at her, but she just kept walking.

"Because the alternative is that we can't stop it. No matter how strong we become, no matter how smart, no matter how brutal, our people keep dying."

Carol's face was numb and she didn't change expression, but she could feel the splash of cold when a tear broke loose and skimmed her cheek on the way to the ground. Daryl flinched.

He kept her hand tucked under his arm, even when their position grew awkward, because of course he did. He never reached for her, but when she reached for him, he'd hold her and never be the one to let go.

She turned to look more fully at him. "We've done impossible things," she choked out, her throat scratchy from so much crying over the past few days. "You've burned an entire herd just by yourself. I've wiped out whole civilizations. We took on the city of Atlanta overrun with walkers with just a handful of people and we rescued Beth. She still died. We brought down Negan's vast empire down to the last peon at the Sanctuary. Rick still died. We've done things no single person should ever be able to do, much less have to do, and we still can't protect the people that we love."

A hard hand latched onto Carol's shoulder, its strength squeezing even through all her layers of scarves and coats.

"We ain't ashes," Michonne whispered and Carol stopped and just stared at her.

Someone's tongue clicked and the wagon horses veered around her and still she didn't move. Daryl had said that to her when they were alone in Atlanta. She'd never told another living soul and he never would have.

Michonne smiled, pain in her eyes. "He said that to me, after Rick—" Her voice broke and she swallowed. "To keep me going. To remind me that I hadn't lost everyone I loved, and they hadn't lost me. To give me a reason to keep trying to save people."

After they'd found Henry's head on a pike, Daryl had taken her back to the Kingdom, and he hadn't brought her to Ezekiel. He went to break the news to Ezekiel himself and he handed off Carol to Michonne. They talked all night in the basement of one of the school's rooms, the two women. About the children they'd lost and the kids they'd had to kill. Because there was no other choice. She wasn't sure if Daryl had known that they had that in common or if he had another reason, but Michonne's thin, brutally strong arms had held her through that night. When the Kingdom fell, it was her quiet voice that had invited them to join Alexandria.

For all the times she'd talked to other bereaved mothers in this terrible and broken world, it was the only time Carol had met another woman with the same stain on her soul she had on her own. The only time she'd been able to voice the thing she knew every other human would have judged her for. That she wished she'd never loved Henry. That she was so, so sorry she'd ever loved Mika or Lizzie or Benjamin or even poor Sam. Sophia was hers, and she never had a choice. But after Sophia's terrible end, she knew better and she kept doing it anyway. But then, that's what she'd just been trying to tell Daryl.

"We don't get to save people," she told them both. "We want to believe it's up to us and it just isn't." Tears blurred her vision. Daryl hugged her hand into his side and she lifted her free hand to cover Michonne's. "It doesn't stop," she whispered to these two people who'd been through all of it with her. "People come and go, and we love them and they die. We can fight harder and better than people have ever fought before, and that's still the way it will always be."

She could feel that road stretching out ahead of them into the next chapter, into the next group of people she wouldn't be able to help but love, and she was so goddamn tired that even holding onto both her best friends, it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling.

There was peace in death, and she was ready for peace. But Daryl's arm trembled slightly, and Michonne's fingers were too thin, and she knew she'd never leave them before she had to.

"Michonne!" The other woman glanced away toward the voice calling her, breaking the moment. Before she went, she stopped to hug Carol.

"When you save someone," the taller woman whispered, "you don't save their lives for good, but you buy them a little more time. All of us have bought a few more days and a few more days for Judith until she's nearly grown. And every day, that girl changes my ideas about what I thought I knew."

She didn't try to tell Carol it was worth it. She just squeezed one more time and went off to help whichever of her people was calling her, and Carol loved her for not trying to cheapen a hard truth with an easy answer.

She and Daryl started walking again. His dog came back to check on him and Daryl's free hand scruffed over his ears before the dog ranged away.

"I know you'd never say 's my fault," Daryl growled. "But you don't know. I's the one who made sure they were both locked up together, made sure he talked to her. Let him get attached. I's the one that let him keep Lydia when I could have knocked him over the head and dragged him back home. Kid can't—couldn't track worth a damn. Never would have found her. I's the one that brought 'em back to the Kingdom when I shoulda kept them going toward the next sunset and never stopped walking. Couldn't stand the idea that you'd never know what happened to him, even if it meant he'd be safe. Stupid."

She dropped her head to his arm, hugging him a little. "Guess you know me a little bit after all," she said. "And if you think I would have ever stopped looking for both of you, well, that is stupid."

He huffed out a breath.

"Do you know why I came back from that little graveyard house?"

He hesitated. "For Glenn. Cause Morgan's dumbass told ya about him and Abraham, even though he swore he wouldn't."

"That wasn't it. Not all of it." A cold gust of wind tickled the free strands of her hair around the edges of her hat. "I thought if I could get away from everybody I loved, then I could be a good person again."

She glanced over to check on Judith, riding up in the wagon. Rick and Michonne's daughter waved at her, her smile bright but her eyes sharp on the countryside around them.

"I did my most terrible things all for the people I loved and part of me—most of me, really—wanted to stop. Stop loving. Stop hating myself. Stop waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares of things I never could have imagined I was capable of."

Michonne rode by, back on her tall horse now, and Carol didn't drop her voice, because it wouldn't hurt her friend to hear the same things.

"I was the same person, alone in that house. And not seeing everybody didn't take away how much I loved them. Not Glenn, not Abraham, not you." She shot him a glance. "Even for all those years after we lost Rick and I barely saw you every six months. Didn't feel a whit different than when you used to fall asleep next to me on the ground, so close I could count the days since your last shower."

He exhaled the gruffest hint of a laugh at their old running joke about showers.

"I wasn't any better," she said. "Just lonely. All those things were still in me, and I realized I couldn't live without people. So I compromised. I went to the Kingdom, where I cared about everyone, but a little…less." She had dropped her voice now, so none of her new people would hear her say it. "It didn't hurt as much as Alexandria. It didn't have as much history for me. Except Henry…"

"Never could hold back when it came to kids," Daryl answered for her. "You're a mom. Ain't right, not to love a kid." His gaze flicked to Lydia again.

"Don't think I don't see who you're looking at," she said dryly, but her smile fell away more quickly than she could help. "I'll come around," she murmured. "Just give me some time, for her."

"She saw you with Henry. Saw what a mom oughta be like," he said. "Meant something to her."

Carol wasn't sure they were still talking about Lydia. Or Henry.

She cocked her head so Daryl would look over at her. "I am who I am," she said. "I'll turn myself inside out to do the right thing, until people threaten my family and then all bets are off. I found my peace with who I am, in that little house with the graveyard out front."

It had been the day he'd come to see her. His knuckles were scuffed and bloody from hurting another person, just the way Ed's used to be from beating her. And she hadn't loved Daryl one bit less with bloody hands than she had with clean. It took her a little longer to get past the uneasy part of her stomach that didn't want to apply that to herself, but it was a different world than the one she'd been raised in, and nobody made it in this world with clean hands.

When she'd first met him, he'd never look her in the eye for more than a second, like he was afraid of what she'd see. Now, he held her eyes as long as she'd look back, no matter how raw both of them were. That's what he did now, blue to blue and bloodshot with all the evidence of tears they hadn't shed in front of each other.

"When I look at you," she said, "I don't see Henry. Because you were with me before I ever knew him and goddamn it—" her voice broke on the curse, on the cruelty of the truth. "You'll be with me after he's gone."

Daryl broke her gaze, a ferocious cough rattling out of him that shook her hand still hugged tight under his arm. She knew what it was. He'd always coughed and cleared his throat rather than let his voice break, or blew snot rockets so he'd never sniffle. So she pressed her shoulder to his, and she kept walking.

And as often as he'd look back, she looked at him so he'd see what she saw.

Author's Note: There's going to be 3-4 more chapters of this to get to a happily ever after, so hit that follow button!