“Why is it us out here? We should reinstate the council-” Glenn offers but Rick shakes his head quickly.

“There’s not enough of us for that anymore, Glenn. This is it – I don’t want to be unchecked anymore,” Rick admits in a thick tone and Daryl grips his crossbow tighter as he listens. “Me, you and Daryl – we’re it. We decide. We’re the last left.”

“Where’s Carol?” Daryl finally pushes the words out that have been stuck in his throat since they got out there.

But no, she knows the real reason she has been chasing them since Terminus - and he's what causes her to stop, breath caught in her throat, her chest aching because despite the fact that she is standing in the middle of woods she's never stepped foot in, she sees him and her heart slams against its bone cage, desperate to cross the distance between them. To him. To home.

[series 5 speculation based on spoilers fic]

He knows Carol hates it here – hates that it mocks her with her inability to stay, but he gets it. Hell she left. Sure it was one time, but it was more than his mom ever did for him – more than Merle ever did. Nobody left with him – not even once. He knows she sees it as a failure but he sees it for what it was – proof. 

[5x06 filler fic]

“Ed never let me wear nice things like this,” he hears her as he strides by, intent on looking for some gas and a way the hell out of the traffic snarl they’ve landed themselves in. He thinks it’s a waste of time – but Rick is hell bent on heading to Fort Benning and fuck, it’s not like he has any better place to be.

Her words bother him as he works. They niggle at him for days, weeks, months after they leave that pathetic strip of concrete – the last place they saw that little girl alive. He thinks about it – the drab tans and browns that blend into nothingness that he’s seen her in. He thinks of the smile on her face as she’d pressed that red fabric against her chest and held it there. She’s quiet – pale and colourless since they left the farm. It’s like he can see the colour bleed out of her right before his very eyes. He wants her to smile again.

Ed never let me.

Well. Fuck that, he thinks. He’ll show that son of a bitch.

“Daryl, do we need to talk?”

He stills, his rag in his hand and his crossbow in his lap as he squints up at Rick, who is standing there, his hands on his hips as he stares down at him. “About what?” Daryl asks slowly, carrying on cleaning his weapon with slow methodical strokes.

Rick settles next to him, his legs sprawled and his elbows on his knees, hands dangling. Daryl watches him out of the corner of his eye, an odd tension keeping his frame coiled – ready to spring. He pulls his bolts out next, cleaning those as Rick sighs heavily. “You and Carol.”