A/N: Um…so yeah. Sorry it's been awhile (for me) in updating, guys. Also, this is the first Caryl FF that I've written wherein I have gone back and edited TWO chapters. The first was based on a wise comment by ImOrca to Chapter 9, and it made the story better and stronger. The second is: I went back, of my own accord, to the last chapter and edited it to be in-canon. I had Carol reference something that doesn't happen until THIS chapter (Daryl saying "What else have I got to do?"), in the timeline of the show. So, as I noted last time, feel free to read the changes I made, if you have the inclination (or if you are a diehard canon Caryl-er and were shaking your head at my egregious mistake in the previous chapter).

Now – to the story!

"A nurse log is a fallen tree which, as it decays, provides ecological facilitation to seedlings."

He realizes about an hour after he enters the woods that it's useless. The hole through his rib cage feels like a giant's taken a gloved hand full of nails and punched its way through his guts. He can handle the pain practically speaking, but it's distracting the shit out of him. He's not tracking the little girl, he's stumbling around like an asshole out here. No point, man, he takes a deep breath, swipes his hair away from his forehead. The giant's fist retreats from his torso a little, but something else tugs at him, somewhere deeper, less defined.

"I can't lose you, too," her slate-colored eyes filling, nearly brimming with tears.

When she said that back in the stable, something inside him had simultaneous leapt up and out, creating a spark, a frisson, a burst of light which emanated from that deep, undefined, untouched part of him. And, like a small animal hunkered down in the dark, safe place it has built for itself, the secret untouched part of him had lashed out at the light, swiping at the source, terrified and pissed off at the disruption of its life-long hibernation.

"Stupid bitch," he choked out. What sounded like anger was, in fact, fear - fear and the desire to be far away from those tear-filled grey eyes and the undefined need obscuring her face like a caul. He tore out of the stable, tore some of the stitches Hershel had carefully woven into his ripped skin, all thoughts of taking a horse gone in his haste to be away from that place, from her.

The woods are thinning up ahead, and he's glad to see the end to the treeline. He knows Shane thinks he's a fool for even bein' out here, lookin' for Sophia. They all think she's dead, or worse. Even Carol…and that pisses him off more than anything. Who the hell is this woman, anyway? Sayin' crazy things to him, makin' him say even crazy things back.

He pushes through the underbrush, comes to where the woods terminate. He's on the far side of Hershel's property, the farmhouse small and distant. He really is distracted. He's looped around, not walking the straight, careful, gridded lines he usually does when he's tracking. He's by a small pond of standing water, its rim choked with reeds, long grasses and…

He approaches the cluster of white flowers, brushes a dirty finger across the edge of one perfectly fat, rounded petal. Remembers himself the other day, blathering on to Carol in the RV about the wailing mothers and the wise elders. It was a story from the farthest reaches from his childhood, and he remembers it mostly because it was told to him with such care and precision, by someone who he thinks almost loved him. Or who could have loved him, if given the chance.

Everyone in the neighborhood just calls her 'Big Ma'. Which is some kinda joke, his eight-year-old self thinks, because Big Ma is one of the smallest women he's ever seen in his life. When he stands next to her, by her elbow at her old wood-burning stove, she's only half a head taller than he is, and just as wiry. Older than most people he knows, with skin the color of his daddy's leather work boots.

She is stirring something on the stove, something white and creamy and specked with pieces of bacon. The air is filled with the smell of baking biscuits. He is here, with her, in her dingy but cheerful kitchen because his house is on fire. And his momma is dead. He doesn't know where his daddy and Merle are. Drinking, probably. The stuff that makes his eyes water when they breathe the fumes in his face.

A few hours before, he came back on his bike, which he knows is a piece of crap, but it gets the job done. And all's he sees is every single goddamn (a swear, he knows, but everyone else does it) person on his block standin' like cows with their mouths hangin' open, starin' at this big, smoking wreck that kinda looks like his house would if something exploded inside of it. And the fire trucks and the sirens and someone wheeling out a person on a stretcher, covered in a white sheet spotted with red and black and gray. And the kids, who usually torment him, tell him in church-like tones that it's his momma, that's she's burned the damn place down.

As the guys who drive the ambulance lift the stretcher up, the tips of a few nicotine-stained fingers fall beneath the edge of the spotted white sheet, and Daryl knows with certainty that it IS his mother under there. He knows those fingers. Knows how they hold a cigarette and a bottle of cheap beer. How they feel when they smack him across the face, or, in rare moments, run through his tousled hair. He drops his bike, the other kids forgotten, and moves towards those fingertips. Nothing else seems to matter but touching them -

"Come with me," his outstretched hand is suddenly gripped by a gnarled one roughly the same size, and it breaks his hazy focus. It's Big Ma. The old lady from down the street who would holler at him for standing on her lawn, but then ask him to pick up all of the rotten crab apples, pays him a penny for each one he clears up.

And now he's standing in Big Ma's kitchen, and the smell of the food she's cooking is driving him crazy. He tries to sit patiently at the small, chipped plastic table that she pushed him towards, but he can't help it. He crowds her, ravenous for biscuits and bacon gravy. He can think of nothing else.

"Shoo," she says, pushing him aside with her bony hip. "Make yerself useful. Pull out the sweet tea" She gestures to the yellow refrigerator, where Daryl finds the pitcher. He pours the tea, careful not to spill. "Leave it there," Big Ma says to him. She's got the warm biscuits from the oven and she's topping them with heaping spoonfuls of white gravy. "Biscuits make you thirsty."

"So," she says, plonks the plates down on the table. "Dig in." She sits across from him, and, very lady-like, places a napkin on her lap, cuts into the heavy meal slowly.

He cannot help himself. He grabs his fork and begins shoveling it in, all warm and salty and buttery and delicious. He's nearly through the plate when he suddenly thinks of his mother's fingers, and the fact that he's not a clue where his Daddy and Merle are. The food lodges in his throat, and he coughs. Before he understands what's happening, the coughs turn to sobs, and he's weeping like he never will again in his life, spit and snot and tears and white gravy dripping off his face.

"'Bout through?" Big Ma says, once the storm of tears have passed, and he's hiccuping regularly. He chances a peak at her, and she's put her fork down, her meal barely touched. Her face is stony and serene, but her eyes are dark and warm.

He grabs his own neglected napkin, runs it across his cheeks and mouth. He nods. He looks at the remains of the dinner on his plate. He is no longer hungry. "It's not fair." He whispers to his remaining biscuit.

"No, it ain't," Big Ma replies. She removes a pack of cigarellos from her cardigan, lights one. It's sweet, spicy smoke, so different from the smell of cigarettes, fills the airs. "It ain't, at all. But there are worse things, boy-o." She squints at him, almost like she's sizing him up. "Your momma, she was a fool," Big Ma says, but not unkindly. "A beautiful, drunken fool married to a brute. And she was too young to die. You'll hear that a lot in the next coupla days. 'She was too young to die'. And it's true. But at least things happened in the order they should. Mother before child." She stops again, and Daryl looks at her, surprised to see tears in the old woman's eyes. "Other way 'round, that's what's not fair. My Mattie, he went a'fore me. Only a bit older n' you. Thirty years ago, and it still breaks my heart, over and over. Each day." She pauses, taps her ashes into a coffee mug. "Only thing that keeps me goin' is hope. Hope that, maybe, this day, or the next, will be better. That someone's payin' attention to my tears and my broken heart."

Daryl doesn't know what to do. No adult in his life talks like this. He's known Big Ma since the Dixons moved onto this ramshackle block four years ago, and he's never heard her say so much. He's confused and sad and scared. The only person that ever paid him any mind other than to tell him what shit he was is dead. He thinks about when his daddy and Merle get back from wherever they are. Who will take care of him? He knows the answer: no one. He looks up again at Big Ma, looks at the half-full dinner plates. Feels the heat coming off the stove. Summons some courage from deep in his child's heart.

"I want to stay here, with you," he says. The words plop on to the table between them. "I'll clean up all of the apples, for free."

Big Ma's face shifts behind the smoke, he shifts in his chair. "We'll see." She finally replies.

He nods. It's better than nothing. He stays quiet, hoping she'll say more things to him. He likes the sound of her deep voice, so unexpected from such a small person. And miraculously, it works - she begins telling him a story:

"Back a long time ago, right afore the war between the North and South, the American soldiers, they started pushin' the Natives, the Indians, further and further west..." he listens to the whole story with rapt attention. He isn't even aware of the tears falling down his cheeks until his vision shimmers with them. When Big Ma finishes speaking, she leaves him for a moment, returned with a worn Bible. Opened it with a crack. Something flutters out.

"A Cherokee Rose," Big Ma says, putting the dried, feather-light flower in his little boy's hand. "There's always hope," she says to him, her warm, wrinkled hand closing over it, making a safe place for the bloom.

oooOOOOooo

He stares for awhile at the living, fresh white of the blossoms, so different from the dead and brittle one he first saw sitting at Big Ma's tiny kitchen table.

"Big Ma," he mutters her name out loud, speaking to the flowers in front of him. It hurts his side, and something deeper, to say her name. She had tried, Daryl realizes now. She had tried, as hard as she could, to hang onto the scrap of a boy he was. But his daddy and Merle were each a force to be reckoned with, and together they were nearly impassable. He had stayed at her house the few days following his mother's death, making himself as useful as possible, showing his worth. But after his mother's funeral, the trio of Dixon men had moved into an even shabbier shack further down the road. He was stuck with his blood.

And then Big Ma died. Her real name had been Luella Mae Jenkins. Daryl hadn't know that until the preacher said it in the church. "We pray for Luella Mae Jenkins, Big Ma to all'a us here."

Big Ma had fed him. Fed his empty belly with white gravy and biscuits. Fed his little boy heart with a story of sadness and hope. He had surprised himself, sharing that story with Carol yesterday. But now he owes her more than that: he has to remind her there was hope. She seems to have forgotten that. And he is still pissed and scared, right, but he wants to find her, show her these white blossoms. He certainly doesn't have anything better to do. He heads towards the farmhouse.