Fighting to Survive: The 3rd installment to Daring to Feel

Chapter 5: Follow

Carol, Daryl and I leave when Rick's group does, as do Maggie, Glenn, and Tara. The others locking up behind us as we all go to scavenge what we can before nightfall. Carol takes the lead, letting Daryl and I trail behind to talk, "so just like that, everything's okay?" Daryl asks me.

I turn my head to meet his eyes as we walk along the road, "Gareth wanted to keep me alive at Terminus, who knows what for.." I trail off not wanting to think about it too much, "then when you were taken with the others, I knew they would kill you. And all I could think about was that if I did get to see you again, I would tell you how much you mean to me." I tell him honestly.

"and how much do I mean to you?" He asks raising his eyebrows.

"you know" I smirk back shyly.

He nudges me, pushing me aside lightly, "come on, say it."

"I love you" I mumble back to him.

He laughs, pulling me into a side hug and squeezes tightly, "ya, I love yew too" and kisses me on the forehead.

We find the stream that Gabriel told us about, the one he's been going to to get his water from lately. We fill some bottles up and follow it downstream, further then where he has gone before. We head back to the road, searching for plants with berries on them or hunting small animals to kill.

We walk the road, dead leaves blowing in the wind. Daryl walking a head of me alongside Carol, wanting to talk with her. I let them be, happy she was around to save us all from that hell we were in. "Hey, I get it. You don't want to talk about it." I hear Daryl say to her. Although I don't care to ease drop, there's nothing else around to listen to, "you okay?" He asks her.

"Gotta be." She says back to him. A flash back from the jail comes to me, when Daryl and Carol had the same exchange, only Daryl and I weren't in a good place then.

"We get to start over." He tells her. Turning to look at me for a second, "all of us with each other. You saved us all by yourself."

Carol answers after a second, "we got lucky. We all should be dead." as we come up a small incline there's an old car on the side of the road, "I'll check it." she says, moving a bit faster to get to it.

Daryl waits for me to catch up to him, walking along side together towards her. We get there after she already checked to see if it would start. She goes to the trunk and opens it, "hey," Daryl gets her attention, "we ain't dead. And whatever happened, happened."

"Let's start over." I add on to her, letting her know it's okay to do so.

Daryl looks at me with a grin, "we are."

She says to us, "I want to" but nothing else follows, not even a but.

"Well, you can." Daryl urges her.

She clicks on the generator in the trunk and it hums with life, "we should leave this here for backup in case things go south at the church." She closes the trunk, bending down to lift up her water.

Daryl throws his hand out, "want me to carry one of those?" But the one in his hand flies out, and hits the ground.

We all chuckle, "no." She assures him and we move along. The road intersects with another and we decide to spread out, search the woods and meet back up at the car in 2 hours.

"Sadie-Mae, stay close." He tells me as I go to move off in another direction.

"Of course" I say to him, happy he's behaving like himself again. I search the area, finding some wild growing berries along the way. A few squirrels past by me but I don't have my bow anymore. I try to scramble around when I spot them, to get them towards Daryl for him to take out and bring back to camp.