AN: Here we go, another chapter here. I'll be in and out whenever I can for the next little while.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl was good at identifying sounds in the woods. The woods were a second home to Daryl. In all honesty, they were more home to him than any structure had ever been. The sounds these days weren't much different than they'd been before. There was the almost constant and faint rustle of the leaves as wind passed through the branches. There was the scratchy scuffing sound of animals scurrying through the leaves that had fallen and dried on the ground. The only differences to the sounds around Daryl now and the sounds he'd known from the rest of his life were that, every now and again, he heard the heavy-footed shuffle of a Walker that wandered nearby without any care about whether or not they startled animals in their vicinity. And, every now and again, one of the members of his group let out some sound or another or raised their voices in the trailing bits of disagreements that they seemed to be carrying in abundance.

Other than the sounds of women arguing, all the things that Daryl could hear were things that he could practically ignore entirely—even the Walkers. They were background noise and nothing more. For him, the sounds around him were so natural that he could consider the woods to be almost entirely silent.

That was, more than likely, why he'd jumped in an almost embarrassing manner when the gunshot had cracked the silence of the woods and echoed around them like it was bouncing off every single tree in their surroundings.

Nobody else in his group, though, noticed Daryl's over-dramatic bodily response to the unexpected noise because they were all dealing with their own reactions. Immediately they raised their voices and stirred up their own din as they questioned each other about what the sound had been, what it might mean, and then let themselves give way to their panic—each choosing the manner in which they wished to panic and the subject over which that panic arose.

"It's a damn gunshot," Daryl finally said, slightly annoyed with his companions' ability to leap to the worst possible conclusions in a second.

"What if it was Rick or Shane?" Lori asked.

"Then it was Rick or Shane," Daryl said. No matter who had fired the gun, the deed was done. There was nothing he could do that would suck the bullet back up into the chamber from whence it had come.

"They're in trouble," Lori said. "They wouldn't fire a gun. Not out here. Not if there wasn't trouble."

"Then it weren't them," Daryl said. "Or they gonna have to handle it."

"We have to find them," Lori said. "Help them."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"We ain't out here to find Rick and Shane," Daryl said. "We're out here to find Sophia."

"He's right," Andrea said quickly, leaping to his defense in the same way that he might come to hers if she needed it. "They can take care of themselves. That's what they said. It's why they went off on their own."

"My son is with them!" Lori said.

It was the first time Daryl had seen a fire lit under her ass all day. She moseyed along, as they went from small abandoned camping spot to small abandoned camping spot, but she wasn't really engaged in the search for Sophia. She was little more help to Daryl than a splinter might have been—and she had a tendency to be a good bit more annoying. But at the thought that something of hers might be at risk, she seemed to snap to attention.

"They gonna take care of him," Daryl said. "You trust 'em, right? Weren't it Rick who followed Sophia first?"

Daryl saw the fire in her eyes and half of him thought better of the comment. It was an asshole comment. It was the kind of thing that didn't need to be said. It was a comment more suiting to his brother than to him, but he'd said it. The other half of him didn't regret it a bit. That half didn't miss the fact that Andrea, Glenn, and Carol—all three—had to quickly take interest in the ground to cover the snatches of amusement that turned up their lips.

"We need to get back," Lori said.

"Not quite dark enough to throw in the towel for the evening," Daryl said.

"What if they found Sophia?" Glenn asked quickly. Daryl wasn't sure if it was a sincere suggestion or if he was just defending Lori but, knowing Glenn, Daryl assumed the Korean was being sincere.

"And fired off a gun to let us know?" Andrea asked, quickly latching onto Glenn's suggestion.

Glenn nodded his head.

"It's the quickest way for them to let us know," Glenn said. "They know we'd hear it. What if they're letting us know they found her? They could be back at the highway with her."

Daryl didn't know if they'd found Sophia or not, but it seemed just as reasonable to assume that they had as it was to assume that there was no possible way that they had located the girl. Glenn was right in that they'd probably fire the gun to get their attention—no matter how risky or even how stupid such a move could be—so it meant that Daryl had to make a decision. Either he decided that they had found Sophia and abandoned the search for the day to return to the highway, or he assumed that they hadn't found her and he continued to search for her when, in reality, they might be looking for someone that was already found.

Daryl couldn't stand being out there much longer with Lori worrying like she was—already being louder about it than Carol had been since Sophia had disappeared—so he decided to haul the group back. He waved his hands at them and turned around, taking his bearings and getting an idea for the easiest way back to the highway.

"Come on," Daryl said. "Let's go. Let's go see if they found her."

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After the unexpected gunshot, the second oddest sound that Daryl had heard since they'd left the church was the sound of thundering horse hooves. The rhythmic pounding was almost unmistakable once someone knew what it sounded like, and it wasn't that odd on its own, but it was the first time that Daryl had heard a horse in a while.

Not long after he heard the sound and identified it for himself, he saw the horse that was making it. The horse and its rider raced toward them. Daryl and his entire "group" stopped in their tracks, despite the fact that there were a couple of Walkers milling about nearby, to stare at the beast in confusion.

The rider of the horse—a young woman—took out one of the Walkers with a bat before she pulled back the reins of the animal and brought it to an almost sliding stop in front of the small group.

"Are you Lori?" The woman asked. "Lori Grimes?"

Everyone, including Daryl, looked at Lori. She couldn't have denied her identity if she'd wanted to. They'd all given her away.

"I'm Lori," she stammered out, just in case the rider hadn't figured it out for herself.

"I'm Maggie Greene," the woman said. "My father has a farm not far from here. Your husband is there. Your son, Carl, has been shot. You have to come with me. There isn't time to explain."

Lori hesitated only a moment before she rushed forward and took the stirrup that Maggie offered her to let her swing up on the horse behind her. As soon as she was seated, Glenn found his voice.

"You can't just go riding off with people you don't know!" He protested.

Daryl was in agreement with Glenn, but he figured the story had to be legitimate. If it wasn't, there was no explanation for how Maggie would have known their general whereabouts, Lori's name, or the name of the boy. Maggie Greene knew enough to make her story hold water.

"I don't have time to argue," Maggie responded to Glenn and anyone else who was listening and might be thinking about offering up some protest against Lori's galloping off into the sunset with her. "We're at the Greene farm. Head back to the highway. To the traffic jam. Backtrack a half a mile and take the turnoff there. We're a mile and a half from the exit. It's a long driveway. There's a green mailbox at the road that says Greene. The gate will be unlocked. Close it behind you when you come through. Keep the cows in."

Before any of them had time to question her directions or even confirm that they'd comprehended them, Maggie dug her heels into the side of the horse and the animal galloped off at the same high speed that it had used to get there. Daryl and everyone left in his small group watched the animal as it disappeared from sight—all of them remaining in silence until there was nothing left to be seen of the horse or either of its riders.

The feeling of surprise passed for Daryl as quickly as it had come over him. These days nothing was really able to stun him for very long. The Walker that Maggie had hit with the bat raised up from his position, apparently stunned but not killed, and Daryl raised his crossbow and shot an arrow through its brain. Before he walked the five feet to collect the arrow, he quickly reloaded, took aim, and dropped another of the Walkers that they'd seen earlier—a creature that had had ample time to attack them but had seemed to have been just as distracted by the unexpected horse and rider as they'd been.

Daryl collected his arrows, wiped them on his shirt, and reloaded his crossbow before he addressed those that were watching his every move and waiting for direction.

"We'll head back to the highway," Daryl said. "Check on Dale. Make sure he knows what's going on. See if he's heard anything about Sophia. Try to find this farm. See what's happened."

"We didn't find her," Carol said, her words escaping with a gust of air that told Daryl that she'd either been holding her breath or was desperately trying to swallow back her emotions.

"We didn't," Daryl said. "But it don't mean they didn't before this happened. Don't mean she didn't find her way back to the highway. Could be there now with Dale." Daryl purposefully left off without mentioning her husband who was still, more than likely, sitting on his ass and being a pain for Dale to babysit.

"What if she isn't?" Carol asked. "We can't go to this farm. We can't leave the highway. She won't know where we are. She won't know how to find us. She'll think we left her."

Daryl nodded his head, understanding her concern.

"If she ain't there," Daryl said, "we'll send everyone on to the farm. See what's going on with Carl and Rick. Let them know what we're doing and where we are. We'll stay in the R.V. On the highway. Tonight. Look for her until sundown. Tomorrow, first light? We'll leave a note. Something she'll find. Head on to the farm and figure out what we're doing there. Keep looking for her."

Carol looked visibly relieved when she heard Daryl's plan. Maybe her relief didn't come from the plan, per se, as much as it came from simply knowing that Daryl had a plan. Carol, it seemed, could manage to keep control of her emotions as long as she knew that she wasn't being dismissed entirely and her daughter wasn't being forgotten. She didn't need a lot, she just needed to know that someone was listening. She needed to know that someone cared. She needed to know that she and her daughter weren't being abandoned entirely.

And Daryl, like an unexplained gnawing in his gut that came about for a reason that was entirely unknown to him, had the absolute conviction that he would never abandon her or her daughter.