Title: Amazing Journey

Author: doctors gal1792

Rating: M for swearing and later chapters.

Summary: Harper Jefferson has basically been on her own all her life. A horrible childhood lead her to Atlanta with a useless college degree and a daughter, the only good thing she's ever had. Then the outbreak came and they run, with her daughter's life being the only thing she cares about. Then a chance meeting in the woods leads her to a new life, a new chapter in the race against the walkers, and a connection with someone she hasn't thought about in almost fifteen years. Will her new family be able to heal her from the pain of the past and will she be able to keep her child safe?

A/N-Okay uhm...I have NEVER written for this show before...I just finished season three the other day and I have had this Daryl/OC idea in my head...but I was scared to do anything with it until I saw that there is actually a fair amount of Daryl/OC fics...so yeah! Please please please be nice to me.

Also, there was no beta available for this story so please forgive any and all grammar mistakes. Thanks!

xxxxx

Chapter 1

To say that Harper Jefferson had it rough growing up, would be an understatement. When she was ten she walked in on her dad in bed with a woman that wasn't her mother and that earned her the beating of a lifetime, one that certainly stayed with her into adult hood. At thirteen her mother died in a horrible car accident and he father blamed her for it. When she turned fifteen, her father married the woman he had been screwing since Harper was ten, and the woman didn't treat her much better than her father. At sixteen she was forced to show her breasts to some boys at school who had witnessed her trying to sell things she had stolen from her dad's dresser; they promised not to tell but they said something anyway-her father locked her in her room for two days with nothing but water to drink.

Her stepmother blamed Harper when Mr. Jefferson was arrested based off an anonymous call that he had a possession of child porn and that earned her a place on the street for it. At that point however, Harper didn't care. She always said the street was a better place than that home. She found herself in a girls shelter, with women that showed her more love than her mother ever did. Harper was always grateful for that shelter because they made sure Harper stayed in school and they were responsible for getting her to college.

But college in the big city had been rough for a girl who had come from a town where everyone knew each others names. She got through it though, maintaining a 3.5 GPA, however Harper couldn't survive entirely unscathed. She was eight months pregnant when she walked the stage to receive her diploma. The baby was the result of a one night stand with a frat boy who had promised to love her; Mark had not said a word to her since she had told him she was pregnant and he had even done everything in his power to make it sound like she was some crazy psycho who was obsessed with him.

When Harper's little girl was born however, the child and mother were both healthy and happy. Harper moved into a one bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta, on the top floor, and she worked two jobs while her best friend from college helped her to watch the baby. For awhile there they were even happy, Harper would always say the first years of her daughter's life were the happiest, because nothing else mattered in the world but her little girl.

The first signs of the outbreak came on Lilah's seventh birthday. Harper had gotten the day off from work and she was out doing grocery shopping for the party, when she caught a snippet on the news. Hospitals were in quarantine and the National Guard was moving in. The next day when Harper was getting ready to go to work, she received a call from her boss, all she heard was, "Don't come in. Get out of the city! Run!" There were screams after that and the line was disconnected.

So Harper did just what she was told. She packed up clothes, food, blankets, and the .38 she kept in her closet. The streets were beginning to be overrun with these...things and Harper didn't remember ever driving as fast as she did that night. They had tried to evacuate her college friend, but when they pulled up to the apartment, there was no hope. Harper sat in a momentary state of horror as she watched people-no not people-creatures tearing the flesh off of people.

The radios said big cities were not safe but neither were small towns, so Harper had no where to go. She learned from the radio that the only way they could be killed was by penetration in the head and after that she kept her gun just a little closer at night. Mother and daughter drove to Harper's hometown, but it was a ghost town. She went to her old house and found it deserted. She carried her child through the house and they gathered up things that were left. More blankets, more coats, more food, and then she found her father's gun cabinet, still filled and well stocked. When they left the small town in Georgia, the car was fuller and Harper had her own mini arsenal in the back, and she had never been happier that she had gone with the stow and go seating in her minivan.

For over a year the mother and daughter traveled up and down roads, trying to find help, and when food ran low, Harper made sure Lilah had food first and foremost. There were occasional groups that they met up with, people who had camped in the woods for awhile, but nothing ever permanent. Harper had grown up not trusting anyone and she wasn't going to change that now, not in a volatile world.

The first winter they spent during the outbreak, they lived in the van and in the second winter, Harper found an abandoned cabin in the woods. She cleaned it out and made sure there were no walkers before carrying her daughter and their belongings into the cabin. The place was small but it served it's purpose for the two. A small bed in the corner was shared by the two and she never forgot the night that Lilah thought to thank her mother for all of the blankets they had carried with them last summer. Boards over the windows and being very quiet kept the walkers away from them and for the most part they lived a quiet existence in the cabin.

"Baby, momma is going to go hunting for supper. You stay here and be very quiet, okay?" Harper said to her daughter one night.

Lilah sighed, "Yes momma."

"You remember what I told you?" She asked, as she handed the child a small pistol.

"Aim for the head," Lilah said.

Harper kissed her daughter on the forehead, "I won't be long."

There was an exchanging of 'I love you's,' and Harper was out of the cabin. There was no sign of walkers in the general area as she left and she found herself slipping her coat off as the warm rays of spring sun shone through the trees and warmed her skin. She had noticed over the months that her senses had heightened and so a slight rustle of wind in the trees would set her on edge. A snap of a twig and Harper's eyes began to scan the woods all around her and then she spotted a walker, she was raising her bow and arrow, a simple thing that she had raided from a sports store and was just about to let the arrow go, when someone else took the creature out.

Just behind where the walker had been standing, was a man who stood over the creature, a knife in his hand and something slung over his back. He looked up and spotted Harper and that was when he began to approach.

"Stay where you are," she ordered, dropping the bow and arrow, and drawing her gun.

"What tha' hell are you doin' out here?" the voice called, his southern accent was thick and she suddenly found herself homesick for her small town.

"I swear, if you come any closer to me, I will put a bullet in her brain," she threatened.

Still he stepped closer, his hands up, "Who are you?"

Harper cocked the gun and stepped closer so that she was now a mere few feet in front of him. The man before her seemed to give off every stereotype of your average redneck. He had a torn flannel shirt, revealing tattoos. His leather boots reminded her of the ones that her father used to wear and his belt buckle added to the look.

"Who the Hell are you and what the Hell do you want?" Harper asked, her voice remaining level despite the adrenalin coursing through her veins.

"I was huntin' in these woods for supper. What about you?"

"That's none of your damn business," she said, "Now I want you to turn around and leave. You never saw me here and you know nothing about this place."

"Wait a minute," he frowned, "I know you."

Her eyebrows raised, "I highly doubt that."

"Yeah, you're the daughter of that piece of shit Jefferson!"

"How would you know that?" She asked, shaking now. None of her fathers friends had ever showed her any remorse, if anything they always seemed to make the situation at home worse.

"My brother used to play poker at your house. I'mma few years older than you but I always felt sorry hearing about the shit you endured."

"Who are you?" she asked, "I am not going to ask again."

"Daryl Dixon," he said, lowering his arms.

Waves of memories rushed back to Harper all at once. Merle was always ransacking their already bare cabinets for food, taunting her, and always taking her father's side. But Daryl had never been cruel, if anything she remembered him being closed off. He'd had it rough like her too; a daddy that beat her, a dead mother, and no one else really there for them. Sure, Daryl had Merle, but she also remembered he always seemed to be gone to juvy.

Harper lowered her gun, "How did you find me?"

"I mean," Daryl shrugged, "I wasn' lookin' for ya if that's what ya mean."

Harper sighed and brushed the layer of sweat that had formed above her brow away, "I have to get back to my cabin."

"Are you okay out here?" It wasn't like Daryl to offer help to people he met in the woods, he usually did as Rick instructed, and that was care for their own people first and think about others later. But this wasn't just regular old people. This was Harper Jefferson, who had always offered a smile to him despite the layers of sadness that lined her face. He had never been happier when she left for Atlanta to go to school; finally out of the hell hole that was their town.

Harper shrugged, "I'm getting by. I go on the occasional run and find things. We mostly survive off of wild game."

"We?" Daryl asked.

She blanched, she was trying to leave Lilah out of this, for her daughter's own safety. But she had slipped up and it had to come out now, "My daughter and I."

"You have a kid?" he asked, his eyebrows raising.

"She's eight," Harper nodded, "Had her right after graduation."

"Look, I have people back up the road. We're hold up in a old prison. There is plenty of room for ya," he said.

Harper was about to answer when she heard a loud scream come from the cabin. She whirled around to look and saw Lilah running towards her, "Momma!" she cried.

Harper ran towards her daughter just as an arrow whizzed past her head and landed it's self into the forehead of a walker, "Baby, what happened?"

Lilah was shaking in her mother's arms, "I heard a noise and I thought it was you," she said, "So I opened tha door but you weren't there."

"Baby are you okay? You weren't bit, were you?" Harper instantly began to check over her daughter's small limbs.

"I shot the one at the door, like you told me. Then more were coming and I slipped between their legs and ran faster than them."

Harper held her child tightly, "You're okay now, baby." She glanced over her child's head to Daryl who was watching the scene, his crossbow still raised for any oncoming zombies. "Is it safe, where you're at?" she asked.

"We cleaned out an entire cell block and secured the premises. There's a huge fenced in yard where this one can play. We have two other children in our group, Carl and the baby," Daryl explained.

"Momma, who is this?" Lilah asked, looking up at Daryl for the first time.

"This is Mr. Dixon, he is from the same town as me and his brother-" she faltered, "Merle, you're brother, he's not?" she stopped herself, because she didn't want to seem selfish.

"No he," Daryl faltered and continued, "He died."

"I'm sorry," Harper said, "I didn't mean to bring Merle up in such a flippant way," she got to her feet.

"It's okay," Daryl shrugged, "So are you going to come?"

Harper nodded, "I need to get some of our things. It's not much but we have some canned beans and soup. We don't keep much in the cabin in case we have to get away quickly."

"Smart," Daryl said, he moved off and picked up the bow and arrow that Harper had dropped earlier, "You might need this."

Harper took the weapon and slung it over her shoulder, "Thanks." She turned around, still holding her child tightly, and began to walk back to the cabin, with Daryl following at a slow pace to give them some space.

When they stepped up into the cabin, Harper set her daughter down and quickly pulled the body off of the front steps. She felt heat next to her and saw Daryl had come over to help, "You're girl did this to him?" he asked.

"Yeah, I taught her," she answered.

Together the two pulled the walker off to the side of the cabin and then Daryl hung back on the porch as Harper walked inside to begin to gather up their things. He couldn't help himself when he looked back to watch the two clean the place up. Lilah was small for her age but Daryl was sure the lack of proper food didn't help. She reminded him of Harper when she was that age. Both had rich blonde locks that they had pulled back into ponytails and he noticed that Lilah mimicked her mother's movements. They moved fast and said nothing as they emptied the cabinets of the food. Blankets were rolled up and shoved into a hiking backpack and lastly, Lilah pushed her feet into small boots, that resembled her mothers.

"Are ya ready?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah, here," she handed him a bag, "Help me get this stuff to the van."

"Van?" he asked, frowning.

Lilah and Harper headed off into the woods, towards the highway, but they were still deep enough that someone couldn't see the van from the road. It was parked on a trail with a camouflage tarp covering the entire thing. Harper pulled it off and opened the back door of the car and she began to load their things in.

"Get in the car, monkey butt," she told Lilah.

"Yes mommy," Lilah said before running around to the doors.

"Here," Daryl said as he pulled open the heavy sliding door for the child.

"Thank you," she told him.

Daryl closed the door and walked around to the back of the van, "I'm glad you're comin' with me."

Harper looked at him, "I don't want any trouble or any memories of that God forsaken town," she said, "I am doing this for her so that she isn't living in fear and you said there was a kid there she could play with," she shrugged, "Everything I do is for her because she is all I have."

"No trouble will come to you at the prison," he told her, "I swear it."

She nodded, "Thank you."

Harper turned back to the van and closed the vehicle up, "Did you walk here or what?"

"Nah, my bike is parked just up on the side of the road at the entrance to the path, drive on down and meet me," Daryl said before taking off.

Harper quickly walked to the drivers seat and climbed in, "All in?" she asked.

"Yes momma," Lilah answered.

"Let's go," Harper said quietly, starting the car and then slowly driving down the path, "And I pray this isn't a huge mistake," she murmured, so quietly that Lilah never acknowledged that her mom said anything.

Xxxx