AN: I'm sorry it's taken so long to get up a next chapter. Life hit and hit hard right after I posted Safe. Short version my step-sister was killed and then I got sick. So here's the next chapter. I had no real idea exactly how I wanted to get where I want to be with this story so I went searching for ideas and this is what I came up with. It's Daryl's perspective, hope you like it.

Our wounds are often the openings

into the best and most

beautiful parts of us.

David Richo

Morning usually sucked, especially more after a rain. Daryl had found that out the hard way when he was a lost child at 8 years old; 16 year old brother in juvie, father, if you could call the prick that, on a bender with a waitress. When he glanced down at the young woman asleep on his shoulder Daryl felt the smallest of smiles creep its way across his face, the innocence in her face as she slept on his shoulder warming his heart in the cool spring morning.

"Mm, Bell hon, wake up," Daryl breathed against her forehead. This had become their ritual, since the first night the nameless girl he called Bell climbed out of her tree and fell asleep on his shoulder her hand on the bone knife at her hip; and in the nights following that first time whenever he had first watch she would climb out of her tree and sit with him sometimes talking, most of the time not, just sitting in the silence of the night. After several nights of silence she had stopped resting her hand on the knife; She was still quite twitchy though, she didn't like being on the ground even though he would rather die than lose another person, and had told her that, if not in words than in his actions.

"Huh," she said sleepily blinking before the moment of panic when her brain registered the ground the beneath her, Daryl always leaned away as her instinct pulled her from the warm cocoon she had been in and her hand flew to her knife. As she observed that there was no danger she relaxed against him once again before smiling apologetically at him.

"There you are," he said with a smile brushing the few strands that had escaped her braid. Doing his best to hide his pain that some part of her, no matter how small, still did not trust him.

"Mm, morning," she said bring a hand up to rub the side of her face before moving to rub the sleep from her eyes. "What time is it?!"

"Shh, little before dawn, no one's up yet," he said shifting to allow her get up to stretch. This happened most mornings; her paranoia at people knowing anything more than the nickname he had given her didn't sit well so she always wanted to be either awake or up in her tree when the others woke up.

A wistful smile crossed his face as he thought that a few months ago someone, Dale, would have caught on immediately or nearly so, to what the two were doing. But Dale was gone, dead, Daryl hadn't really known the man well, but he had been a good man. And now he was another name to remember of people who were no longer alive; just another victim of the disaster. The comfort he found in the memory of Dale was that the man was at peace, not so with some others. Pushing the thoughts from his head he looked at the girl he called Bell she was positioning herself at the base of the tree where she had left her harness getting ready to climb up to it.

"You going back to sleep, hon?" he asked dreading the answer.

"Eh, I'll see how I feel when I get up there. What about you?" Bell asked glancing over her shoulder at Daryl as she prepared to climb the tree to her perch.

"Been thinking I might go look for something edible," Daryl said pushing the thoughts of peace he had felt just moments ago from his mind, as the girl with no name paused in her climb preparations to look over her shoulder at him.

"You want to go hunting?" she asked the ropes in her hands just waiting to return her to the perch where she'd hung her harness. Steadying himself Daryl concentrated on the silence and serenity that the woods had brought him since those days lost in the woods. In his heart Daryl knew she trusted him, that didn't mean that her reluctance to accept that she was safe within their group, with him, didn't hurt. That the only time her eyes weren't guarded and movement didn't hint at her devastated soul were the moments she was settled beneath his arm.

Drawing himself up proudly Daryl proclaimed "I don't go hunting; I go killing." It was the first time he had uttered those words since he'd begun ot make his way towards Atlanta in the hopes of finding people he still couldn't admit were gone, even to himself. The anger and bitterness associated with the truth that the woman who had said those same words, to a younger Daryl Dixon, was long dead and gone came through his voice.

Looking at the girl across the camp he saw her shoulder stiffen at the sound of his voice and watched as she buried her reaction to his tone deep inside her with everything else. Some part of him thought it was good that she was in pain; maybe then she could understand what he felt ever morning she woke thinking he would attack her.

Weeks ago after their first night when he'd had the first watch, he watched as she climbed out of the tree and held his breath until she settled next to him and ask if he wanted company. It was their habit now and he always gave her the space she needed but that didn't mean it didn't wound him when he saw the accusation in her half-conscious eyes that he had impure motives in his mind.

Without a second thought about her Daryl picked up his crossbow and slung a bag with some water in over his shoulder and slipped into the woods. Another thing he had learned in the subsequent visits to the woods, after his introduction to them, was that they were a place of balance and order, the strong and capable killed the weak. And that was what he needed, balance. Nothing made much sense to him much anymore, he needed the solace he found in the woods.

Moving between the branches Daryl breathed in the morning air, savoring the taste of the damp cool air as it filled his mouth and soothed the anguish in his soul. The early morning fog was swirling through the underbrush, his feather light steps created swirling cyclones at his ankles. Taking a moment to bend down and inspect the earth for tracks Daryl felt a sense of nostalgic bitterness that not so long ago the idea of the dead rising up to eat the living was a farfetched as the belief in Gods and it didn't matter a lick to him which ones you were talking about.

He missed the days when going to the woods was tranquil and pleasant, not the means to live by; when the skills he'd developed as a child were hobbies and not perquisites to surviving. Trekking through the woods Daryl was careful to stay within a safe distance to the camp, it was a delicate balance of the greatest distance from the camp so as to find wildlife abundant but not going so far as to be too far from his people.

Walking carefully through the brush as the fog began to dissipate, Daryl froze at the sound of movement in the underbrush. He leveled his crossbow at the bush in the direction the sound had come from. As the hare emerged from the bush across from him Daryl let the bolt fly from the bow. His aim was true and the hare slumped dead on the ground.

A few quick steps and Daryl had the hare gathered up, the bolt removed, and his query stored in the bag. Continuing on through the brush Daryl was unconsciously aware of the time that had passed since he'd left the camp and knew that soon he would need to return, whether he wanted to see the knowing silent forgiveness in her eyes, or not.

Glancing ahead of him in search of danger Daryl noticed a change in the trees ahead about 200 yards distant. Taking a few steps towards the oddity Daryl moved carefully through the brush, they had been tracking herds all winter and there were several moving through the area. As he approached the strange growth pattern Daryl saw that the trees actually stopped for about 8-10 feet. Stepping through the final bit of brush Daryl passed through the tree line into the 9 foot break in the trees and he saw the reason for the break in the trees—railroad tracks.

His curiosity sated Daryl turned back and began making his way back to the group. The ramifications of the tracks echoing through his mind. Railroad tracks tended to lead somewhere and that somewhere had to be better than what they were living in now.

What they were doing was not living, they were surviving, and he wanted to get back to living. He guessed that the girl, whoever she was, had enjoyed living and life at one point too. He didn't want to find a place for her, he wanted to find a place to live. And if she came out of her shell he wouldn't mind seeing who she was. Smart pretty girl from a good family studying anthropology, natural medicine and botany with weapon skills to boot, she sure was something else.

Stunning, shocking, a slap in the face, something to make you stand up just a little straighter. Maybe that's why he liked her. She was Belle. She could survive in the world around them and do it with grace, it was something different. What he'd seen the moment he met her was like one of those moments people talk about, the world stopped.

He knew there was a faint smile on his lips remembering the first time he laid his eyes on Bell. It was a cold morning just at the beginning of winter, frost still crunched under his feet as he looked for any animals late to hibernation. And there she was calmly combing out her hair beside a rekindled fire; his eyes glanced around the glen, a walker shambled towards the girl he would later call Bell. A whistling whoosh broke the morning stillness and the walker fell in true death with an arrow between its eyes.

When he looked back at the young woman she had begun braiding her as though nothing had transpired. And that was what struck him. Over the coming weeks there would be more he'd discover about her. It would be in the way she'd smile at Carol, the silent way she proved to be the person he could trust to defend what was dear to his heart. The way her eyes watched him, the way he watched her. He'd found a kindred spirit, a survivor with a broken soul stitched together.

Stepping between the trees Daryl found the group occupying themselves with morning activities. Lori was bothering Carl about minding his hygiene, as though that were still a top priority with the dead walking. Rick was hovering nearby; Hershel was looking over his family, ordering things.

"Welcome back," Carol said from across the fire from him, he smiled warmly at the woman who reminded him of so many who'd cared for him in his younger days. When Carol smiled he felt as though anything were possible even in this world, the best word for what he felt for her was fondness, she was so caring, she was warm and she was capable in a way not many women he'd known were.

Just beyond Carol's shoulder, at the edge of the camp on the periphery of everything was the young woman who'd been in his thoughts since he'd stormed out of camp. When he met her eyes she gave him a small sad smile. He'd hurt her, he knew, she'd forgive him because deep down she knew.

AN: Hope you liked it. Now please give me a review, click the little box below and let me know what you think. Ideally I'll have number three up in a week to 10 days depending on work load.