Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: This is response fill for the USS Caryl's "What if" Challenge on tumblr regarding the following prompt: (Scenario #2) "What if Daryl had found Sophia alive in season two?" - As requested by fairiesmasquerade.
Warnings: Contains spoilers for all three seasons of the Walking Dead, specifically season one, loss/healing, strong language, hurt/comfort. Also contains a big divergence from canon circa season one.
Chirp
Chapter Two
He'd already decided that he was going to backtrack from the riverbed, that was where he'd found the doll so he figured it was as good a place as any to start.
But when he reached the side of the ravine he decided to play it safe and dismounted, leading the horse carefully around the rim of the small gorge, eying the steep sides and the fallen log at the bottom with a rather vindictive sneer. Christ, Merle would have had his hide if he'd known he'd been so careless.
By the time they found a natural parting in the trees, a deer trail that had a more manageable downwards slope to it rather than the expressway to hell he'd caught last time, his side was throbbing enough to give him flashbacks. His body remembered the pain, the underbrush ripping at him, tearing stabbing and-
He ignored it.
Everything seemed exactly like he'd left it. The two walker corpses were still sprawled where they'd fallen, stinking to high heaven and already scavenged by the local wildlife. Even in death, no, especially in death, nothing was sacred. Nature was a two-timing bitch that way. Still, his lips did a u-turn as he spared them a glance, wondering off handedly what the virus might be doing to the animals that had ingested it. It was all a best guess as far as he was concerned. The same went for the water and soil, god knows were the thing fuckin' stopped, if it was transmutable. Only time would tell he supposed.
He made a loose circuit around the riverbed. There were no tracks, but then again he hadn't expected there to be. Instead he looked for signs of activity, human activity. He didn't need a neon sign, in fact he was looking for the opposite; he was looking for the trail that didn't stand out.
It took a while, but he eventually found it in the form of a small section of broken shrubbery along the eastern most edge of the clearing. Pay dirt. It wasn't much, but it was enough, a start at least.
He followed the trail for a few meters before he was satisfied. There were reasonably fresh tracks in the soil, too worn by the elements to get a clear picture, but enough to tell him that someone small had passed through here no more than forty-eight to seventy-two hours ago. There was even a wisp of fabric stuck to the bark of a maple not two feet from the mouth of the trail. The piece of wool was white, khaki white.
She'd been here.
The deer scat was fresh as well; indicating that the path was still regularly used, easily mistaken by a novice for a man-made trail – like something you'd see at a state park or a rest stop. Honestly he could see it. She'd probably stumbled onto the trail after stopping for a drink at the river. It was obvious she'd been spooked, nothing less would have caused her to leave that doll behind. She'd been carting that thing around twenty-four seven since the quarry camp, it was practically another limb as far as she was concerned. So, something had scared her and she'd run off, east, probably headed down the trail thinking it actually went somewhere.
Contrary to what most city slickers might believe, animals, unless panicked or enraged, actually went out of their way to preserve their habitat rather than the other way around. Sure, bears would strip the bark off trees when they shimmied up them for safety, but generally even bears, the lumbering behemoths of the forest, moved through it with a natural sort of grace. Deer were perhaps the best example of this, they ate god damned everything but picked their way through the underbrush to ensure they didn't harm the plants. It was a classic case of nature versus nurture, the natural order, the circle of life, whatever you wanted to call it.
Either way, every god damned time it was humans, people, that stood out. People were unpredictable, they broke pattern. The puzzle piece that was humanity no longer fit into the grand scheme of things, and that was why they were so easy to track. People were easy, yet hard in their own way, a different sort of unpredictable. When you were looking for someone you couldn't just set yourself down by the nearest watering hole and wait. Nah, this was a whole different ball game. With animals it always came down to the essentials, eat, sleep, fuck, drink – with people you could only count on that model less than fifty percent of the time. Instead, you had to understand the person you were looking for.
You had to ask yourself, if you were a scared twelve year old girl from the suburbs and you were lost in the woods, where would you go?
He breathed in, inhaling almost unconsciously as the mineral-rich tang of the river rose in the air around him. The scent of crushed pine and mouldering soil competed for their place on the scale. Where had she run off to?
He let his boot scuff through the dusty soil as he considered his options, shading his eyes and looking upwards as a raven trilled from the forest canopy. She was twelve and a city slicker to boot; she probably didn't even know the first thing about surviving in the wild. So where would she set up camp?
She'd go somewhere familiar. Somewhere she felt safe.
The house!
He swung himself back onto the mare and angled them east, digging his heels into Beauty's sides as they started down the deer trail at a moderate pace - wondering, in the back of his mind, if it was really going to be that simple.
After all, a fool's hope or not, you couldn't exactly count on luck these days either.
A/N #2: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – There will be one more chapter to this particular story, so stay tuned.