"Hey, Daryl?"
At the sound of his name, Daryl glanced up from where he had previously been preoccupied by cleaning off his crossbow with a damp rag and some soapy water. When he had arrived at the Hilltop a few days prior, he had been almost immediately greeted by a page from Connie's notepad teasing him about how filthy it had gotten during the trip from Alexandria. It was something that he knew, realistically, was just a lighthearted jab, but he found that ever since, he'd had the itch to clean it up.
Now that he and Connie had been dating - for lack of a better term - for some time, he found that his hand no longer instinctively reached for the notepad when he would respond to her. Instead, after she'd greeted him with no formalities... only her teasing comment on cleanliness... he looked at her for a brief moment to gather his own thoughts before signing back as proficiently as he could.
"Good to see you too."
A small smile let him know she was somewhat impressed. He figured maybe that was subconsciously the reaction he had been hoping for when he had stayed up late during their weeks apart memorizing all she and Kelly had taught him while Lydia and Dog slept soundly across the room from him.
"Been practicing?" Connie signed back, her eyes practically beaming with pride.
He shrugged to play it off as best as he could.
"A little," he mumbled.
When she giggled silently, he had a feeling she had read his lips, and she leaned up to place a gentle kiss against his cheek for the first time in weeks. When he turned his head so that their lips could meet in the same gentle caress, she smiled against them, and pulled away only to jot another short sentence down in her notepad.
Long day of traveling. You hungry?
She shifted the pen and paper over to him so he could respond.
Got any of that fresh tomato sauce you made last time?
Connie shook her head and reclaimed the pen and paper.
Couldn't use the last crop of tomatoes. Mites got to them.
She looked at him with a small, apologetic smile.
"Next time," she signed.
When his thoughts came back down to Earth, Daryl noticed the expression of slight concern present in Kelly's eyes as she looked down at him from where she was standing next to his seat on the grass.
"Have you seen my sister?" She asked once she'd finally realized that he was not going to respond verbally. "I figured if anyone would know where she was..."
When her sentence trailed off, leaving its entirety to be interpreted, he set his crossbow down next to him.
"I've been helpin' out with inventory all day. Haven't seen much of anyone," he told her. "She and Alden ain't back yet?"
"I haven't seen either of them since this morning."
The crossbow he had just previously set down only rested briefly in the grass before he gathered it back up and slung it over his shoulder as he stood. That definitely was not the answer he had been looking for.
Daryl hadn't felt any sense of hesitation when Connie had offered to accompany Alden on a run for supplies that morning. She'd survived the outside world for years before even becoming aware of his very existence, and he had been through enough with her to know that she was more than capable of handling herself outside of the confines of the Hilltop. She was a fighter - a survivor - just like him. A routine trip to gather supplies was practically second nature to her by that point.
But the fact of the matter was that she and Alden had left early with the explicit intention of returning before sunset. The sun had already begun to cast an orange hue over the open field outside of the gates some time ago. Not being safely back in the confines of the community by that point had not been a part the plan as of that morning.
"Shoulda been back by now," Daryl mumbled - more to himself than to Kelly - but didn't miss the growing concern in her eyes when he glanced over to her.
"You don't think-"
"Nah," he stopped her before she could complete the thought. The fact that he had wasted no time grabbing his crossbow and shifting gears practically into battle mode told a different story, however. "Just wait here."
Admittedly, he was somewhat surprised when she chose to listen and not to follow him. She had a tendency to be brutally stubborn, especially when it came to her sister's safety, but he hypothesized that maybe he had sufficiently masked the concern in his tone well enough as to not clue her in.
When he approached the gates, he noticed that Magna and Yumiko had already beat him there, weapons at their hips as they stood near the entrance to the community they now called home. There was no point, he figured, in inquiring as to what they were doing. He could tell - especially by the way they both looked back at him in unison once he was close enough that his footfalls were in earshot - that all three of them were on the same page.
"We're giving them until sunset," Yumiko said without needing to wait on an official conversation starter. "If they're not back by then we're heading out to look for them."
"It is sunset," Daryl responded. Judging by the way the remaining light in the sky was being cast, he assumed it wouldn't be long until darkness settled over them completely. And regardless of what Magna and Yumiko's plans were, he found that he wasn't willing to wait until they reached the point of 'worst case scenario' before taking action. He squinted in the glow of the setting sun when he angled his head to look up at the Hilltop residents standing watch up above. "Open the gate."
"Daryl..."
He heard what he knew was Magna's protest loud and clear, but his mind had already been made up. Feeling of this level of concern over what should have been just a simple run was somewhat foreign to him. Maybe a few months prior he would have been in the same frame of mind as the two women standing in front of him, but logic and levelheadedness seemed to have escaped him at the first thought of potential trouble.
Since the outbreak, he had seen enough of the people he cared about stripped away at the hands of unfortunate circumstance. Over the last year or so, Connie had become his person. Not just a lover, but a best friend. Someone who could make him smile despite the circumstances surrounding them. She managed to bring forth a side of him that - before meeting her - he was sure he had lost long ago.
Even just the fleeting thought of potentially losing that was more sobering than he had anticipated.
The gates just in front of them slowly parted, but before Daryl could take any action regarding stepping outside of the safety of the Hilltop, he was able to spot two horses galloping towards them from just a short distance away. While he was unable to make out the faces of the riders, he knew exactly who was approaching, and he breathed out a silent sigh of relief as the tension in his shoulders subconsciously released.
"Good timing," Magna commented when the two previously missing Hilltop residents in question rode in and began to dismount their horses, her hands moving as if by second nature to sign along with the spoken words. "Daryl was just about to establish himself as a one-man search party."
Connie looked over to him with a small inquisitive smile and a curious tilt of her head in response, and he could only mumble something even he couldn't quite make out in half-hearted protest to Magna's assertion. She took a step closer to him, glancing down to the bag at her hip just briefly as she unzipped it. After pulling out her notepad and pen, she grabbed one more item to hand over to him.
A slightly weathered can of preserved tomatoes.
Daryl looked at them, almost perplexed, for just a short second before she tapped him on the shoulder to show him the words she'd scribbled into the notepad in her hand.
Not fresh but if you still want tomato sauce it might be salvageable.
His eyes looked back to hers, searching them for a long moment, and he leaned in to kiss her before his lips could manage to turn up into a smile of their own. He savored the feeling of her lips against his...her hands moving to grip his shoulders affectionately...and when they broke apart from the intimate embrace, he made sure that she was looking at him before signing what he was suddenly grateful he had learned during one of his semi-secret lessons with Kelly during his last stay at the Hilltop.
"I love you."
The way she blinked in surprise had him slightly flustered, and in worry that he had somehow gotten it wrong, he reached for her notepad to scribble the same words down in definitive writing.
I love you.
Her eyes skimmed over the phrase with what could only be described as adoration behind them, and she looked up at him with a radiant smile before signing back to him.
"I love you too."