I was possessed by this idea and have been up hours longer than usual writing it because it has literally been years since I "ficced." Despite the site guidelines against it, I am uploading this hot off the presses with no edit or beta. There is cursing 'cause it's Daryl. There is improper grammar 'cause it's Daryl. The Daryl/Carol 'ship is just a natural fit to me now in the Walking Dead series and I hope to write more. Feel free to share tips, comments, etc, for improving this piece and writing more. It is a stand alone with no intended sequel despite how I end it. The title and much of the theme comes from the beautiful and awesome fanvid "Lifeline" by KajaM. A *must* see on youtube.

Lifeline, by MissMishka

DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.

In the darkness, he wasn't able to see the red crescents marring his forearm, but Daryl Dixon could feel them.

He hadn't felt the sting when the marks were being made. Shocked as they all had been, Carol could have ripped his arm clean off then beaten him with it and he wouldn't have even flinched. Her neatly trimmed fingernails digging into his flesh as her hands wrapped so tightly around his arm hadn't come close to registering at the time.

They burnt now. Not so much the little cuts, he supposed, but that moment was seared into his being now and they were a lingering reminder of that afternoon.

Had it only been hours since that moment? He couldn't help but wonder as he scrubbed the bar of soap roughly over the skin again, as if that could erase or wash the welts away.

Exhaustion tugged at him, a reminder of how long the day had been. His skin was pruning up from the time he'd spent in the creek, washing the dirt and dust away that seemed to have soaked into sweating pore as they dug those graves. Still, he had a sliver of soap left and his hands didn't seem to want to stop moving until every bit of it had been used.

It wasn't any fear of infection that kept him returning to the cuts for the harshest of the cleaning. He didn't much care to figure out whatever the hell it was that had him trying to scour away his own flesh. He didn't much care to think about any damned thing at the moment.

Using the last of the Irish Spring, he doubled over to dunk his head in the water then flipped back upright and worked the cleanser through his hair. Shampoo could've been found easy enough by going back to the camp for it, but the soap was all he needed.

The last little bits of the bar of soap crumbled against his scalp and clung to the spiky clumps of his hair. A few careless sweeps of his hands worked up a lather, which he opted for completion submersion to wash away. Had there been no concern of the attention such noise would bring – from the dead and living - he would have flung himself back with a mighty splash and thrashed in the water to get rid of the soapy residue. Instead, he went quick and quiet to his knees then eased back into the depths he'd found in this particular bend to the river. Things were often quiet anymore, eerily so with the world changed as it had been, but it was more so under the water. Everything outside himself was muffled.

Obliterated.

There was a temptation there to sink further.

Maybe to just float away.

The hand grabbed him just as his lungs began to burn and, as was his way, he reared up swinging.

Even in these circumstances where life was always at the random mercy of Walkers, he had an inkling who it belonged to, and that stilled the instinct to go for the buck knife strapped to his hip. Instead, he lunged from the water with a gasp for breath as his left hand latched on to the wrist still lingering near his shoulder. He went from kneeling to standing over his captive in a series of moves honed from surviving fair means or foul. Within the space of a heartbeat, his right hand was wrapped around a pale, fragile neck with enough force to silence the gasp or scream she may have issued had he given her mind time to react to the attack. Her body bent backward at the command of that hand on her throat, head quickly nearing the water's surface as he twisted her arm out at a painful angle.

Her death could come quickly and easily in so many ways at that moment. A flick of his wrist and proper pressure could snap that pretty little neck or just strangle the life from her. The continued download force of his motion could submerge her into the murky water he'd found but a moment's peace in just seconds ago and he could hold her under to drown there.

She knew it, too, from the look in her eyes.

Wanted it, even.

Haunted and desperate as that pale blue gaze was, it had no effect on the stopping of the violent scene that could have played out. Her fingers did it.

He had no doubt that it was simple instinct that had caused her to wrap her free hand around his right forearm as he grabbed her neck, but those fingers were still curled around his flesh and clinging to it like a lifeline. Again, he was too caught up in the moment to feel them, but the momentary wondering if he'd have her claw marks there later was enough to freeze him in place.

Chest heaving with the breaths he drew from the exertion, he simply leant over her like that for what seemed an endless moment. Water dripped from his head to her face, but she never blinked. Countless words and thoughts and actions swirled through him, fighting to be the one thing that happened next, but he was never one to take the time to try picking the right thing to do.

First instinct was always the best one.

Close as it was to the surface, her body made little splash as he abruptly released his hold on her with a deft flick of the wrist so she'd also let him go as she was flung away. Before she had more than a moment to thrash toward the surface, he was grabbing her back, his hands gripping her upper arms with bruising force as he yanked her to her feet.

"I ain't gonna do it for you," he bit out, the words snapping loudly in the darkness.

There was no confusion in her gaze as to what he meant, telling him plain enough that the thought was indeed on her mind.

"I didn't come here for this," was her only response.

"What the hell are you doing then, sneaking up on me like that?"

"You were under too long," her voice was soft. Gentle and patient like he hadn't just had her life in the hands that were still holding her softness with more force than was deserved.

But then, that was them in a nutshell, wasn't it? Her feminine, maternal softness and grace and his coarse, clumsy roughness.

"You can't take these risks," she was continuing into his thoughts, the look in her eyes changing as he felt the flex and bunch of her muscles just before her hand began to rise towards him. "Being out here alone, in the night like this. Anything could have happened to you."

"So, what, you've got my back now?" he scoffed harshly, putting as much condescension as he could muster into his words. Anything to put a different kind of shine in those eyes. "What were you gonna do if a Walker came upon me? Sew it something?"

With a snorted laugh, he again released her, the force of his sudden withdrawal leaving her to stumble for balance. It was a low blow and sooner or later she'd realize the card he played and why, but for now it tended to do the trick to play the asshole like her worthless husband.

Her splashing about told him plainly enough that she was following as he turned and walked toward the bank where he'd left his things. It wasn't an easy process for anyone to slog through water with wet clothing to hinder their progress, but her thrashing was more than enough to draw the dead. That, though, he let slide rather than jump down her throat over.

His only slightly quieter stomp carried him on to dry land and he reached for his bow first and foremost. With the familiar weight notched against his shoulder and the cold metal cradled in hand, he did a quick sweep of their surroundings to insure there was no visible threat. He tuned his ears for the telling sounds of snapping twigs or growling rasps of dead lungs still drawing breaths no longer needed as she made her way cautiously to his side. With the little bit of moonlight filtering through the trees, his visual scan had done little to ease his guard, but after several minutes of nothing to be heard but their own breathing he felt assured that there was no immediate danger.

From the undead, at least, that pesky voice in the back of his head chirped up as it occurred to him that their breathes were coming at the exact same time and depth. Refusing to think how their bodies had unconsciously matched one another on that simple act, he lowered the bow back to its prop against a fallen tree in exchange for his dry shirt.

The feel of her eyes on his every motion told him to pull the garment on for coverage, but he used it for a towel as he'd originally intended.

"Here," he heard as bright white filled his line of sight.

"Use it yourself," was the thanks she got for the proffered towel.

It was withdrawn without another word and he turned his head away as she lifted her arms to briskly rub at her wet bit of hair. Having seen the clothesline that morning and knowing that white's like the towel had been laundered, along with intimates like her damned bra, he wasn't about to catch a glimpse of any unbound swaying or jiggling.

Bad enough, he'd be imagining it.

The dripping had mostly stopped from his own hair, so he tossed the shirt aside, sat on the fallen tree and began unlacing his boots. This pair was beginning to wear thin and soon wouldn't be good even for the most basic tasks. Wearing them into the water probably wasn't helping. He forced himself to wonder things like when and where he'd get another pair as he peeled off his wet socks and removed the sheath from his hip in a smooth, well-practiced motion. The socks he balled and thrust into the boots he'd set aside, the knife was carefully laid on the tree within reach as he stood to shuck his wet pants.

That part of him that he just couldn't keep completely beat down was urging him to make a show of it, see just how it was she was looking at him at that moment as he stripped. Surprised? Afraid? Confused? Seeing as those were the only options he'd let his mind pursue, he turned his back to her as the trousers dropped. Her gasp, once presented with his scrawny white ass, was faint and would have been missed if he didn't so automatically pick up on every little thing about her. Quickly grabbing the dry pair he'd laid out, he yanked them on and refused to wonder too much as to whether she had liked what she glimpsed or preferred a heftier man as her husband had been.

It was just as he'd straightened and released the tab of the zipper he'd quickly zipped that he sensed her moving. Despite the heat of these Georgia nights, goosebumps raced uncontrolled over his skin as he felt her step up to his back. When her fingers swirled the air behind him, obviously wanting to yet knowing not to touch, he ground his teeth and clenched his fists to keep from turning on her.

"These stitches shouldn't get wet."

A dry section of towel tenderly dabbed at the exit wound the arrow had left at his side and his control snapped.

Again, there was no surprise in her gaze as he whipped around and she found her wrists grabbed to hold her hands away from him. He didn't care to speculate as to whether that lack of surprise was due to her always expecting violence from a man or if she had some trust that he'd never really intentionally hurt her like that dumbfuck husband of hers had.

What he may have wanted to do or say was lost in the moment she raised glistening eyes to meet his gaze head-on and her lips trembled out a single, barely audible word.

"Please."

Good intentions he had had and they said the way to hell was paved with them. After that day, none of them were left in any doubt that this now was hell, so really what had he been fighting for anyways.

Her left hand went straight to his cheek the moment he released it and with the momentum of his right hand grabbing the back of her hair, their mouths collided hard enough to jar teeth. It wasn't pretty or even any good for a first kiss. Maybe it wasn't even a kiss, is why.

It was just hunger.

Need.

A desperate need for physical distraction from all the shit in their heads and horror from their day.

His left hand went to her breast, the softness filling his palm as he knew it would.

Her right hand slid under his arm to curl up across his back and draw their chests together.

For balance, he shifted his stance, thrusting his right leg forward just enough that she seemed to see it as encouragement for her legs to part and straddle his knee. Her body shook with what he hoped was lust as her hips rocked forward to drag the crotch of her wet pants up along the hard muscle of his thigh.

The keening noise that came from her throat at the friction encouraged him to let her mouth go and move to her neck as both his hands made their way to the curve of her ass. He allowed his hands a moment cup the softness there that his eyes had admired more often than they should have. Then his callused palms were skimming up her spine beneath the clinging fabric of her T-shirt, catching the hem and drawing the garment up as they went. Her hands left him long enough for the wet top to be peeled off, then she was wrapped around him like a vine once more. Her head tipped forward for her tongue to capture a droplet of water he hadn't known or cared was trickling down his neck and he wanted to lay her back to find similar drops to drink from her body.

First, though, he wanted that tongue licking at his. Having flung aside her shirt, his hands returned to cradle the back of her skull, rubbing against the short hair that was little more than fuzz on her head. It surprised him for a moment that he liked the stark, unfeminine cut, but he didn't let it stop his goal to get inside her mouth this time. The first crash of their lips had been just that, an impact of flesh on flesh with enough grinding to get both their motors running, but no intimacy.

He'd never wanted to let a woman in in any way before in his whole life, but he found himself parting his lips and silently asking for her to do the same. With that innate way of hers that he'd known would be his downfall, she immediately read his actions, opened her mouth and dove into his kiss. That hunger was still there, but the desperation was lessened by the realization that this was going to happen. It was wet and sloppy as their tongues twined, but damned if it weren't almost enough to make him come in his pants.

Needing to gather some control, he broke away and shuddered in reaction to the whimper of heated protest she made at the loss before he pressed his lips and teeth to the underside of her jaw. Trimmed as they were, her fingernails were scratching the hell out of his back as he licked at the hollow where her neck and shoulder met. Her hands clenched at his shoulder blades as his pulled her pelvis up and in to his.

And it was that, not the jostling of his wound from her legs winding around his waist that stopped him. Her damned hands clinging to him like he's all she has to hold on to in this fucked place brought him back fast to reality.

No roll in the bushes could help here.

With her plea still playing in his head, he couldn't force himself to be cruel about this. He couldn't bring himself to be anything at that moment.

His right arm wrapped like a steel band around her waist while his left hand guided her head into the crook of his neck. He allowed her to kiss and lick at the tendons she found there, savoring the passion and rare affection in his life. While he staggered back to sit on the fallen tree, he hoped that they might have it again in some future place. Sitting was clearly a mistake, he was made to realize, as she quickly shifted in his lap so her knees found some purchase on the mossy bark beneath them. The heated grind of her crotch on his would have tempted a saint and he was far from being any kind of saint, but her fingers flexed on his skin and he wasn't on that log with her any more.

Instead, he was under the baking sun on a hot as hell day as he used every ounce of strength he had to hold this woman back from rushing forward and making the nightmare all the worse. He had so easily seen it in his head as she'd made to run past him to Sophia as the little girl had stumbled from the barn like a newborn foal. Seeing only her lost child, Carol would have raced to embrace the bloodstained shell while all the others watched in frozen horror, failing to act in time to stop the creature from ripping the woman's throat out. With all he had seen, he had known he couldn't have gone on through witnessing that and then having to make sure both their heads had been bashed in so neither of them could rise to walk again. It had been hard enough knowing they'd have to put that little girl down, even if it wasn't Sophia any more.

Instead of bark under his ass, he was back his knees on the hard-packed dirt outside that barn, clinging to Carol as she strained toward her daughter. The woman's sobs had ripped his guts clear out and she didn't even know. He had held her through it, almost wishing he could join her in that kind of bawling, not giving a damn as the others had begun to react. Their tears, anger and anguish were nothing to him. It wasn't until the group began to move toward the bodies that Carol raised her head from the dirt. That's when she'd clawed him. That moment when she tore herself, literally, from his hold and screamed in a voice he hoped to never hear again in his life for them to "Stay away from my baby!" There had been other moments; like when he had pulled her away from the bloodied mess she had been cradling against her chest so that they could wrap Sophia's body and bury it in one of the many graves they'd dug. The moment Rick carefully carried that sheet shrouded little bundle down into the first hole and laid it down while tears mixed into the sweat covering the sheriff's face had been hard for everyone to witness. God knows Daryl had had to hold Carol back from climbing down into that grave herself. But he thinks she really got him when she ripped and pulled at his arm as it was latched around her torso and couldn't seem to let go as it all unfolded.

It didn't take Carol long to realize that the hard ridge she had been trying to ride to completion had gone soft and he was glad for the frantic grind of her body to stop. But then the shaking began and that was worse. Though her body shook and trembled like it were wracked with sobs again, no wetness dropped from her face to his shoulder.

"I can't do this," she said in a voice so tired and defeated he thought he might manage some tears to fall on her shoulder. "I thought I had prepared myself. I knew…a mother knows," her head began to twist and pound against him as if he were a wall for her to beat herself upon. "I knew my baby wasn't coming back to me. I wanted to believe, but…I knew!"

He lost count of the number of times she said that or variations on the theme while he slowly began to rock with her cradled against him. He didn't have a single word to say in return and she never expected one. Never having been rocked or rocked a person before, Daryl eventually blocked out the actual words she said and focused on her presence in his arms. Her hands had long since stopped clinging to him and now hung like dead things at her sides.

Goddamn, he hated he thought that thought.

Unconsciously, his arms tightened around her, pressing her chest once again so tight to his own, he imagined he felt her heart beating. Whether he did or not didn't matter. It was all the reminder he needed that she and he were still alive. For whatever that was worth now.

Her words dwindled off and her weight shifted in such a way as he knew she was asleep or about there against him. As careful as he could, he shifted her weight around to where he could stand without collapsing. His side was arguing with him already, but he needed to get them at least as far as the relative safety of his bedroll on the edge of their camp.

Standing, he somehow managed to step into his dry boots, grab the bow and buck knife then began on his way. The few articles they left behind would be collected another time.

He realized she wasn't asleep as he finally made it to his bedding. She watched him with an expression in her eyes that he didn't know. Couldn't identify as never having to have seen it or anything like it before. Whatever it was, it made him feel… fuck, it just made him feel and he turned to grab a shirt for her to put on before he started thinking, too.

She slid on the plain white T he'd grabbed and lay back on the bedding while he toed off his boots. Surreal is what he thinks a moment like this is called as they prepare to bed down together without speaking a word to each other. There only a faint shimmer of light from the camp and moon to remind them that it's not all darkness and they instinctively turn on their sides toward that light. She curls one arm up under her cheek and lays staring out at nothing while he tries to figure out how he's supposed to or allowed to lay with her having just pulled back from sexual intercourse with her.

"I just needed her to be alive," she confessed into the night. "I just needed that baby girl to be alright. How can it make sense for her to have made it through everything else, just to die now."

Words weren't in him for this, so he just reacted by pressing his forehead to the back of her head and draping his arm over her waist.

"I just needed her to be ok," the litany continued.

As sleep finally claimed them both, he allowed the thought, "We all did," to drift through his mind. They had all held to the hope that a miracle might still be possible and now….

It didn't bear thinking about, so he stopped and shut his mind down to rest.

In the darkness that covered them, neither would know that a band of bruising encircled Carol's waist and that the arm responsible for the mark was lying softly and protectively over her midriff. And it was not until they were both asleep that that forearm was absently stroked then cradled by the hand that had gouged it hours ago.

They were two bodies spooned and clinging to the ragged edge together not knowing what fresh hell would be next.