The next morning, the sky was still overcast, with the clouds being driven along by a wind that cut through clothes and skin, straight to the bone. When Carol got up, later than usual because she'd stayed up so late the night before, to make breakfast for herself and the Hunter, she was surprised to find him already awake, working on his bike in front of the house. He was wearing his outfit of the day before, minus the helmet, but his fingers looked frozen stiff with the gloves missing their fingertips.

„Would you care for breakfast? Or will you wait for your partner to arrive, and eat with him?" she asked, stepping outside as she pulled her woolen shawl about her shoulders in an effort to stay warm. He had taken it upon himself to start the fire in the hearth again, and the cold outside came almost as a shock after the comfortable warmth inside.

He looked up from where he was kneeling on the ground, doing something with the front tire of the bike. His eyes looked even bluer in the light of day than they had in the yellowish light of her lamp, even though he had to squint against the whiteness of the sky. The scars running down the side of his face caught and held her gaze for a moment before she met his eyes and felt her heart turn again.

She had never seen eyes like his.

Completely countering his posture, attitude, and behavior, his eyes betrayed a deep-seated pain, something deeply and utterly vulnerable at his core that he wasn't always succeeding in protecting and that had taken too many hits for him to simply walk away from. Clearly uncomfortable under her scrutiny, he lowered his eyes to the ground.

„I'd appreciate breakfast", he mumbled, with no further reference to his mysterious partner. Getting to his feet, he pulled a faded red rag from one of his rear pants pockets and wiped his fingers on it to get rid of the dirt and grease from his bike. When she turned back toward the door, he leaned down to turn the key in the bike's ignition and pull it out, placing it into one of the pockets of his jacket and closing the zipper to keep it safe.

His footsteps as he followed her into the house sounded loud, as if they might bring the building down. Ed's had never sounded this loud, and he had frightened her nearly all the years they had been married. Yet even though the Hunter sounded so much more intimidating than Ed had, she felt no fear.

He hadn't said more than a dozen words to her yet, but he made her feel safer than she ever had.

.-.

He went out after breakfast. Ever since following her into the house after tinkering with his bike, he hadn't said a single word, clearly uncomfortable with making conversation or even being in someone else's company, obviously used to being alone - despite the Companion he had mentioned. She wondered how he would cope with asking the people in the village about the wolf. He would need to knock on doors, introduce himself and his purpose, and ask questions of her neighbors. Whatever his strengths might be, they were clearly different from that.

As she looked out her kitchen window she was surprised to see another man stepping up to him as he turned toward her neighbors' house, back toward the village entrance, obviously intent on following a set order through the village in his investigation.

The other man was slightly taller than he was, no more than two or three inches, with grizzled stubble covering his chin and cheeks. He looked slimmer than the Hunter, with smaller, more delicate hands, longer fingers, and narrower shoulders. She was surprised by how comfortable the Hunter seemed with the stranger so close to him. From what she had seen the night before and during the morning, she had taken him to be skittish and shy, all of which had her question is choice of profession. Interacting with people couldn't be easy for him, yet he allowed this stranger into his comfort zone.

Puzzled, she watched as his hand went to the strap of his crossbow on his chest, anchoring itself, as the two men approached her neighbor's front door.

.-.

„You smell anything already? He been through here recently, or just skirted around?" Daryl asked Rick, his blue eyes pinning his Companion down. Rick shook his head wordlessly, looking away. Daryl nodded once, biting his lower lip, and continued walking toward the first house on their side of the road.

Rick had arrived - or rather, chosen to come out of hiding - at the break of day. He had woken Daryl by throwing a handful of pebbles against his window, and once Daryl had come out, they had discussed their plans for the day. So far, they had no idea if the Changed wolf they were tracking was still in the area, but Carol's letter was recent enough to justify taking some time to look around here before moving on.

When they reached the house they had been heading for, the first one in the village, Daryl visibly braced himself, took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. Clenching his teeth as if preparing for a fight to the death, he glanced over at his Companion and then raised a hand to knock on the door.

The man who opened had white hair and kind eyes. He questioningly raised a bushy eyebrow as he looked from Daryl to Rick and back again. „Good morning, young sirs, what can I do for you?"

Daryl shuffled his feet and lowered his eyes, the kind voice tearing at him. „Good … morning, sir. You have probably heard the rumors that there might be a Changed wolf in the area … and I'm the Hunter who's been called in to find it and … deal with it." Taking another deep breath, he looked up again to meet the man's eyes. „I'm Daryl Dixon."

The older man nodded at him, taking in the jacket, boots, and scowl. Daryl felt that he was looking into his soul, right through the cracks in his shell, in the walls he had built around himself. He had met people like him and Carol before, people who could sense the hurt and pain in others, who could actually see it in his eyes, and he was more afraid of them than of those who were out to hurt and kill him.

The pain they could cause him was far worse.

.-.

After asking all the villagers and listening to them describe the howling and growling that some of them had heard at night, they returned to Daryl's room at Carol's house to go over what they had learned. Daryl got out the rough map that he had used to find his way here and laid it out on the bed. Next, picking up a lead pencil, he quickly sketched the entire village, outlining the houses with some identifying characteristics, the main road, and a handful of the roads branching away from it, on its flip side.

„So", he began, pointing at the left edge of his makeshift village map - where they had come from. „It preceded us, coming from here. I'm pretty sure it's the same one we've been following for half a year already - we haven't heard about another one in all that time, so that's got to be it." He looked up at Rick expectantly, and Rick nodded at him before looking down at the map again.

Daryl carefully placed a small ‚1' at the spot on the map where the wolf had first entered the village, based on what the villagers had heard. Next, he placed a ‚2' where the second person had heard the wolf growl. They proceeded like that until they had mapped the complete pattern of the wolf's movements through the village.

It had entered from the west, trotted down the main road until it had reached the fifth house in, and then turned north, passing to the east of Carol's next door neighbor - which made Daryl's chest tighten days after the fact -, then walked along the vegetable patches in the back of the next three houses, heading east again, turned back onto the main road, circled one house, and then left the village for good toward the north. Nobody had heard or seen it again since that night, eight days ago.

Toeing off his boots and slipping out of his jacket, Daryl scooted back on the bed to lean against the wall. Reaching up to massage his right shoulder, he put his head back to stare at the ceiling, lost deep in thought. After a few minutes of silence he turned his map around to look at the bigger one, pored over this for another few moments and then carefully placed an „x" on it slightly west of the village, which was a dot roughly the size of a fingerprint.

„This is where it had its last meal that we know of, right?" he asked Rick, looking up at him. Rick, who had been getting increasingly restless, tore his gaze from Daryl's shoulder and nodded. „So … with the distances it's been covering, and the winter coming on, and the nights being really cold, and it without shelter all this time … it'll need to eat again today or tomorrow, right?" Another nod from Rick. A look to the side, another exercise in ignoring Rick's guilt.

„That means," Daryl concluded with a sigh, „that we have to warn people of it, and keep them safe. Let's get to it. We've got today."