Hello everyone! This is a Caryl story that I've been working on for a bit and I thought I would finally put it out there to see if it drew any interest. This is obviously AU, but I am still going to try to keep the characters true to how they are on the show. There will be other characters that may pop in from time to time from the show as well. I'm a little nervous because there are a lot of Caryl fics out there and therefore lots of competition. I'm hoping that you all like it though and don't be afraid to tell me if you don't. The first chapter is a little short as I'm trying to lay all of the ground work for later chapters so bear with me! Well I guess that's all I need to say for now. The story should pretty much speak for itself so let me know what you think, PLEASE.

*I Do Not Own Any Of The Characters From The Walking Dead Nor Do I Make Any Money Off Of Anything I Write.

*If Caryl is not your thing, then please don't read. To each their own ship and this is the ship I have chosen so please be kind in that respect. Thanks!

Daryl carried the last of his boxes through the open doorway of the new house and paused to look around again. Well, it wasn't exactly new, but it was new to him more or less. It was a step up in the world for him. He had exited from the land of the dirt poor to the average. It wasn't a giant leap by any means, but it meant something to him.

He had gotten hired on at the local Dodge dealership working in the automotive department. It had taken him two months before they had moved him up into a supervisor position and he still couldn't believe it. The pay was the best that he had ever had and the benefits and hours were even better. He worked from eight until five in the afternoon and was off on the weekends. He had saved up all of his spare change, eating literally nothing for months until he had saved enough to move out of his shit-hole apartment and into something better.

He had found this relatively decent house that seemed to be in his price range almost by accident. He had heard about the place from one of the employees at the dealership who knew he was looking. Daryl called up the man and the next thing he knew, he was holding the keys in his hand. There was some work that needed to be done to it like finishing and painting the kitchen cabinets, fixing wobbly rails on the porch, and redoing the floor in one of the bathrooms, but it seemed to be in decent shape otherwise. He had worked out a deal with the landlord so that he could get a cheaper rate for fixing the place up too. The neighborhood was actually decent and he didn't have to worry about people trying to break in and steal the only little bit of stuff that he had. In fact, he had almost felt a little out of place as he had pulled his old Ford truck in the driveway.

He didn't have a lot of stuff, but fortunately for him the place had come furnished with the furniture that he needed so he only really needed his clothes. The house had two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a laundry room located just off of the kitchen. He wasn't used to the luxury of having a washing machine and a dryer in the house. He and his brother had always had to go to the laundromat to do clothes so it would take him some time to get used to that.

His brother Merle was currently spending five years in prison for a drug charge. His brother had been walking a fine line for quite some time and Daryl had known that the day would come when he would get himself into something he couldn't talk his way out of. So far he had only spent half of his sentence and Daryl was worried that he might do something stupid while he was in there that would get it extended. His brother wasn't exactly the easiest person to get along with. In fact, most times he was a genuine asshole, but he was the only family Daryl had so asshole or not, he still loved him.

He sat down on the couch in the living room with a sigh. He had four days off of work due to the Fourth of July holiday and he really didn't know what to do with himself for that amount of time. Truth be told, he had rather be working. He wasn't the type to sit at home and do nothing. If there was something to do, he preferred to be doing it. He had anticipated the moving to take a little longer than it had so far, but surprisingly it appeared that he was done, save for unpacking all of his stuff and putting it away.

He grabbed his keys off of the kitchen counter and headed to his truck. He could at least get some paint and materials to fix up the porch and the wobbly rails while he had nothing else to do. He also needed to pick up some food while he was out because he hadn't really had any to bring over from the old apartment. He walked outside to his truck and started it up, cranking up the radio to the local rock station and headed off down the road.

Carol Peletier had gone beyond living her life to merely surviving it. When she had first gotten married, things had seemed to be okay and Ed, her husband, had been good to her. She couldn't exactly pinpoint the day that things had changed, but one day they had. It might have been the fact that Ed had started drinking or the fact that he had gained weight. She wasn't really sure what had set him off, but something had. She had always tried to be the good wife that she thought he wanted. She cooked, cleaned, and even had sex with him whenever he wanted.

It started as sarcastic comments here and there about random things like her hair or her weight. Then after a while, the comments turned into insults and the insults turned into physical abuse. The first time he had hit her she hadn't been expecting it at all. She remembered that she had tried to put on something sexy for him for their anniversary as a surprise. She had just reached into the oven to pull out a casserole that she had baked for him when she turned around and he backhanded her. The casserole dish had dropped to the floor and shattered, sending glass and food flying everywhere. He had yelled at her, telling her that she was dressed slutty and that she was too fat to wear clothes that showed off her figure like that. That was the last time that Carol had ever worn anything like that.

As the years passed, she tried to get up the courage to leave him, but every time she tried she would chicken out. She didn't have a job or any money to use to get away from him. Ed was careful never to give her more money than she needed to do the grocery shopping and he always checked the receipts. So she did the only thing she could in order to survive the abuse; she catered to him. She wore herself to the bone trying to please him and keep his temper from flaring. Some days it worked and some days it didn't. Sometimes no matter what she did, Ed wasn't happy. Those were the worst days and she spent hours in the bathroom crying over her bruises while he was at work.

She had become so ashamed of how she looked that she hardly went anywhere except to tend to her flowers by the porch or to do the grocery shopping when Ed gave her permission. Today she had gone outside to water her flowers when she had spotted a blue Ford pickup in the driveway next door. She glanced at it several times, wondering if someone was moving in. The place had been abandoned for a while and she knew that the owner, Hershel Greene, had been thinking about putting it up for rent.

So when the door opened to the house and a man walked outside, she tried not to stare too hard, but she couldn't help herself. The man appeared to be in his thirties with dark hair and a medium build. She drank in the sight of his muscular arms in his sleeveless shirt as he carried in a couple of boxes off of the back of the truck. She was so preoccupied with her staring that she didn't realize that she was watering her porch steps instead of her flowers and she quickly adjusted the spray, hoping that no one had seen her staring.

It had been a long time since she had really paid attention to a man, but the man that walked out of that house begged to be noticed. He wasn't flashy in any way, but he caught her attention all the same. She knew that eventually this would be a problem if he the man didn't have a wife. Some way or another Ed would make her pay for the neighbor moving in. He loved to twist things around and conduct stories just to have an excuse to hit her.

So as good looking as the man was, she knew it wouldn't last long. Ed would find a way to make the man move or scare him off just like he had done with several others over the years. Carol would go back to living the same old boring life, covering up the same old bruises and hoping that the next blow wouldn't be the one that killed her.