AN: Well, hello all. I'm in knitting hyper-drive right now, but this little idea slammed into me and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I thought, hell, why not share it? Let me know what you think.

Part One

"Man, this place is freaking me out." Glenn shuddered as he walked down the middle of the deserted street, flanked on one side by Daryl and Michonne on the other. The rest of their party, Sasha, Tyreese and Rick, were mirroring them at the opposite end. The place was eerily silent, except for the gentle brush of branch against branch in the few trees that remained in the development.

"It's definitely creepy. I'll give you that." Michonne grinned at him, made an over-exaggerated zombie face and then smirked at him behind Daryl's back. The hunter turned on them, scowling and both Glenn and Michonne quit their goofing off lest Major Daryl get twisted panties over anyone having a bit of fun. As soon as his eyes were once again trained ahead, scanning the deserted houses, Glenn broke and led Michonne into a quick release of chuckles.

Daryl stalled, glaring at them both. "Shut it, the pair of ya. We got no idea what's in these houses."

"Yeah, but they're in the houses, not out here," he couldn't help point out helpfully. "They can't open doors, you know." Glenn wasn't intentionally pushing, but he seriously wished Daryl would lighten up. Ever since they'd fled the prison so many months ago now, he'd been Captain Serious. He'd never had much of a sense of humour in the first place, but now he was downright dour, taking his role as leader completely to heart. Glenn wasn't going to deny he was an excellent one, but he'd seen what being a full-time leader could do to a guy, and a quick glance over his shoulder could remind him if he was ever stupid enough to forget it.

"It's inside the houses where we're goin', dumbass," Daryl said, but where once there might have been an underlying hardness, now there was just apathy and it made Glenn nervous. Daryl was always focused on the task at hand, ruling a run with a fierce rigidity that had meant more than once they'd escaped with their lives from tight spots where it could so easily have gone south. He knew he should be grateful for the emotionless concentration, but all it did was make him nervous. They'd been running on near empty for months since the prison fell, slowly finding the rest of their group and trying to find a new permanent home, but it was easier said than done, and Glenn knew it. He also knew that, while they'd learned so much from past mistakes and had managed to survive this last interlude on the run a whole lot better than the last, it had been emotionally more devastating to do it without key members of their group. He still held Maggie at night when she woke up crying, and some nights his ears rang with Beth's muffled whimpers, and he himself had succumbed to the hot burn of tears. Hershel was not just a member lost, he was a father brutally taken, and none of them had quite come to grips with it.

Glenn chanced a sideways glance at Daryl, noticed the wrinkles squinting always into the sun were causing, the bags that got darker and heavier as they settled deeper beneath his eyes, the coldness that he hadn't quite been able to understand until Maggie finally told him about Carol. His friend was operating on autopilot in order to chase the pain of rapid losses away, clinging to his responsibilities to keep him afloat.

"What's the brief, boss?" Michonne abruptly stopped walking, forcing Daryl to do the same or risk leaving her behind.

"Anything that'll get us through winter," their fearless leader grumbled, casting a skittish, surveying glance around the cul-de-sac. "Clothes, blankets, any meds you can find are priorities, but if you see anything else you think we can use, grab it." Daryl started walking again, quickly coming to a stop at the last house in the street. "Anything you find, bring it out and leave it in a pile out here. We'll drive the truck down and load it all at once. Let's do it." They parted and took on their duties like a well-oiled machine, a house each. In, clear, search, retrieve, dump. Their method was fast and furious, methodical and it always gained results. The bounty was piling up in the middle of the road and after an hour of hard work, they reconvened to decide whether to keep going or decide they had enough to take back and keep everyone in their camp happy.

Glenn felt itchy for some reason, like his feet couldn't stay still and he needed to be out searching. Michonne re-joined them, her arms laden with coats still on hangers that she'd liberated from someone's closet and Glenn admired a sleeve of leather that poked through the bundle. She was just about to open her mouth and say something when a cry echoed through the stillness of the street and all three of them froze.

"Did you hear that?" Glenn asked, already turning in circles trying to work out where the noise had come from. Before he could worry about it, more cries erupted through the air and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end.

"That's a baby," Michonne and Daryl said at the same time and then all three of them were in action, keenly hunting down the sound before it got loud enough to attract walkers.

The haunting wails gathered steam, furious bluster erupting loud enough to be clear as day out in the street, helping them to finally pinpoint the right place, Daryl brutally shouldering open the door instead of trying to calmly jiggle the lock like he usually did.

"It's a newborn," Michonne enlightened them and Glenn frowned.

"How can you tell that?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"They cry different. Easy to tell when a baby is new," she said with a shrug, her eyes bright yet distant and Glenn figured he knew her well enough by now to know when to back off and pretend he didn't notice when her emotions were heightened and she retreated within herself.

The cries were even louder now, but instead of coming from upstairs, the sound bounced through enough walls to dull the piercing fury of it.

"Must be a basement," Daryl muttered, already looking for the door. As soon as he found it he wrenched it open, narrowly missing an axe swinging into his groin as Michonne grabbed the back of his vest and yanked him backwards.

"What the fuck?" He was breathing heavy from the near miss, subtly cupping his family jewels in a moment of protective countenance, and then hesitantly, carefully sidled back up to the door. Michonne was beside him, shining her flashlight down the stairs into a dark, dingy room just barely big enough to house a family of fleas.

"Oh shit, there's someone down there. Looks like she's passed out." She thrust past Daryl and Glenn and was already half down the stairs before Daryl risked following, eying the structure for any more surprises. Michonne was bending down over the baby, then checking the woman covered in blood and birth fluids, her arms limp around the baby trying to protect it even while she was out cold. Michonne gasped, stepped back before decisively diving into the situation.

Daryl finally stumbled down the last steps, shocked into immobility as he took in the scene. Michonne was busy dealing with the baby's cord, severing it from the afterbirth, clamping it and then wrapping the child in one of the smaller blankets that had obviously been gathered for the purpose before standing and handing the baby, now strangely quiet since it had been touched by human hands, over to Daryl. He took it as if mute, his wide, haunted eyes pulled to the half-exposed woman on a filthy mattress on the floor. There was blood everywhere—it coated the inside of her thighs and the bottom of her dress but was soaked heavily into the mattress beneath her. Her hands and arms were red and her face was pale, but he could see the subtle rise and fall of her chest and his own ached in sympathy.

"She okay?" he asked huskily, still barely believing he held this new, squalling thing in his arms while it's mother lay unconscious on the floor. "She gonna make it?"

Glenn stood to the side, dumbfounded as Michonne worked, trying to clean away the blood with the materials and water that had obviously been gathered for the birthing event.

"Doesn't look like she's hemorrhaging," she reported, her voice shaking. "She's probably just exhausted. Who knows how long her labour was." She pulled the dress down, then picked up the new mother's arm and simultaneously checked for a pulse in her wrist and her neck. "Pulse is strong," she confirmed, and then all three of them let out an unsteady breath of relief. Michonne glanced up at Daryl, saw he wasn't doing so hot and turned toward Glenn. She didn't have to say a word.

"I'll go back and get the truck." He bolted out the door without a backward glance. There was already enough tension in that basement, he figured. He didn't need to be there while Daryl dealt with finally finding Carol and a baby that none of them had had a clue she'd been carrying.

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AN2: Would love some input on gender and names here, if anyone has any ideas?