Daryl walked through the aisles. There wasn't much left. Hannah, Glenn, and Maggie were checking the pharmacy next door. He wandered through the grocery store, Carl trailing behind him.

They'd been just outside Greenville for a few days now. They'd found a house and managed to keep ahead of the herd.

"Hands up, asshole." He heard the woman's voice coming from the next aisle over. Daryl looked down at Carl, his eyes wide with a panic.

"Stay here," Daryl mouthed. Of course, Carl didn't listen. Daryl didn't bother to tell him off. His concern was helping Rick. He wasn't sure how many people were there, but they had one of his people. He'd be damned if he let anything happen.

Daryl crept back down the aisle. He kept his crossbow raised. His mind drifted over to Hannah. He worried about these people. If they were looking around, they could find her and the others. He needed to push that away. He needed to help Rick.

He peered around the corner to see the back of some guy, he couldn't see a woman. He walked out, his crossbow raised. The closer he got, he saw her. She stood there with long curly blonde hair and a rifle pointed at Rick.

"Rick?" She asked. She sounded so familiar.

Daryl froze in his steps. Charlie? No, it wasn't her. She was long gone now. He saw the kid turn towards him. Daryl kept his bow raised. The kid's eyes narrowed as he pointed his rifle towards him.

"Will," he spoke up. Will?

She turned away from Rick and towards him. Her brown eyes widened in recognition. Holy shit, Willow. It was Charlotte's sister. She changed quite a bit since the last time he saw her. Her face had healing cuts, as well as a fading black eye. He saw fading black tally lines on her arm. They looked like tally marks. One thing that hadn't changed was how hard her expression was.

"You," she said, the rifle now raised and pointed at him.

"You know these guys?" The kid asked. Kid couldn't be much older than Beth.

"Yeah. They're with my sister and niece," she explained. Will looked back towards them. "Charlotte?"

Daryl stiffened. She didn't know. Of course she didn't. He looked down at the floor guiltily. Charlotte wanted him to find her sister, and honestly after everything, he'd forgotten about her. Willow looked between Rick and Daryl. Rick was also looking down at the ground and shook his head. Her rifle lowered and she leaned back on the empty shelves.

"Oh," was all she said. She put two and two together, it wasn't that hard. He was surprised there wasn't a bigger reaction.

"I'm so-" Rick started.

"Hannah?" Willow cut him off. The kid looked over at her. Daryl couldn't see the look on her face.

"She's okay," Daryl spoke up. "Checkin' the pharmacy with Glenn."

"Good," she sighed. "Long as she's okay."

"Where're y'all set up?" Will asked. Daryl and Rick shared a look. "There's only two of us. We haven't eaten in days… Or slept…"

"Weren't you the person who said we were broken?" Carl chimed in from the back. Daryl forgot the boy was there.

Apparently, Willow did too. She jumped and then looked at the boy.

"I was wrong," she told them earnestly. "I know that now. Hannah's my family."

Rick gave a curt nod to Daryl. It wasn't like they were about to turn away Charlie's sister. Even though, from what he could remember, she wasn't exactly his number one fan. However, Daryl owed it to Charlie. He promised he'd find her. She's Hannah's family too.

"We're at a house not too far," Daryl said.

"I think we got all we can from here," Rick declared. He kept throwing looks at the kid. "I don't think we got your name."

"Eli. His name's Eli," Will answered. "He's a friend." Eli stood stone faced.

There was something about him that Daryl didn't trust. Probably because he was a stranger. If Willow wasn't Charlotte's sister, they wouldn't be taking her in. Good people are hard to come by these days, if there are any left at all. He couldn't exactly trust Willow, from what he remembered from the farm, she wasn't exactly all that stable. The kid seemed even less so. Still, can't exactly leave them behind. She's blood after all.

Charlotte was dead. She was gone. Will had lost her older sister and didn't even know. She had to swallow the lump that was growing in her throat. A part of her just always assumed Charlotte was dead, another hoped she was still alive. Now knowing that she would never see her sister again, it was devastating.

She wouldn't let herself fall apart. She could do that alone. Especially around Daryl. That son of a bitch. She didn't trust him, not after what he did. Still, Hannah was with them, which means Will would stay. Besides, she knew she'd been wrong about a majority of the group. They weren't bad people. She trusted Andrea, and Andrea trusted them. It might do Eli some good to be around people that aren't her.

Will followed Rick, the asshole, and Rick's son. She couldn't quite remember his name. The only reason she remembered Rick's was because he gave her the gun. They left the store and walked over to a green Hyundai, a large pick up truck, and a motorcycle. Eli and Will were a few steps behind them.

"Can we trust them?" Eli asked in a low voice.

"Yeah," she assured. "We can. They're good people." Well, most of them were.

When they got closer, Will saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to get a better look. It was a girl wearing a baseball cap. She was with a young man and another girl. It took her a second, but it was her, clear as day. She was taller, a little bit skinnier, but it was still her.

"Hannah," she breathed. Will took off, she started sprinting towards her niece.

She wrapped her arms around Hannah, and hugged her tightly. Hannah was alive. The last of her family was standing there. She was okay. She was alive. Thank God. She'd gotten so big. Will could hardly believe this was the same little girl she held in her arms thirteen years ago. Hannah's arms stayed stuck to her sides.

"You're here. You're alive," she said relieved. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Hannah wiggled and wrapped her arms around Will. Her shoulders shook, as though she was crying. Will felt the tears start to fall from her eyes. She was here. Hannah was okay.

Will and Eli sat in the back seat of the Hyundai. Hannah was wedged in between them. Rick and Carl, she finally remembered his name, were in the front seat. The asshole was on the bike, and the other two – Will knew them, but she had trouble remembering their names – took the truck. The ride was quiet. Eli stared out the window. Will kept looking over at Hannah, fearing that she would disappear at any given moment.

Charlotte was dead, but Hannah was still alive. Willow never expected to see her niece ever again. After all the shit she's had to live through, after everything she's lost, finding Hannah is the one good thing. If Hannah hadn't been with the group, Will doubted she would've gone with them.

They pulled up to the run down looking house just on the outskirts of the small town. There was a black man standing watch. She recognized him too. I should've really written these names down. It wasn't like Andrea really talked about the farm. Until that last day, Willow never wanted to talk about the people she left behind. She stepped out of the truck and grabbed her pack.

"Is that…" the man on watch, T-something, started.

"Get inside, we'll explain everythin'," Asshole said while getting off of his bike. The other two got out of the truck and unloaded their supplies. Hannah, Carl, and the other two from the truck walked through the front door. The asshole –she decided to always refer to Daryl as this since that's what he was – followed them. This left only Will, Eli, and Rick outside.

"C'mon inside," Rick gestured. Eli gave her a questioning look, wondering if they should go in, Will gave him a nod and he followed Rick inside.

Will walked through the threshold of the small, ramshackle house. She walked down the front hall into a living room, where a group of familiar looking people were hugging each other. There was a tense silence when she walked into the room. An older woman with short grey hair gasped.

"Hi," Will waved awkwardly.

"Y-You're Charlotte's sister," the woman pointed out.

"Yeah," she replied awkwardly.

"Who's the kid?" T-something asked pointing at Eli.

"That's Eli," Rick spoke. "Came across them in the grocery store in town."

Will's eyes drifted across the group, they were a lot smaller than the last time she'd seen them. They looked run-down, and much stronger than they had before. The woman with long brown hair, she remembered her being Rick's wife, looked very pregnant. Will swallowed the lump in her throat, Charlotte should be here.

"My name's Glenn," the guy from the truck introduced himself to Eli. "That's Maggie," the girl he was with, "Hershel," the old man, "T-Dog," right so it was a T-something, "Lori," Rick's wife, "Carol," the older woman, "Beth," a pretty young blonde girl, "and you've already met Rick, Daryl, Carl, and Hannah."

Will was thankful Glenn said their names. How awkward would it have been if she went to talk to one of them only to not know their name? Especially considering that she's met them before. Her mom always tried to teach her how to be a proper polite lady, and that included remembering names of random people she encountered in the street. Obviously, that never really worked. Or maybe it had, since not remembering their names caused her a little bit of anxiety.

Eli stood on her left and gave an awkward wave. She understood his feelings, last group they met weren't good people. But Hannah was here, and despite all her past misgivings, she believed they were good.

Later, they made some dinner. Will salivated at the smell of food. She sat next to Eli. She took a few bites of the canned beans and cooked squirrel. It was heavenly, then again everything would taste heavenly to her since she hadn't eaten in days. Eli played around with his food, but hadn't taken a bite.

"You gotta eat somethin'," she urged. He took a bite of the food.

"Happy?" He asked.

"Ecstatic," she replied. "C'mon eat up."

"Yes, ma'am," Eli mumbled under his breath. Will rolled her eyes and got up.

She brought her dishes over to the dishwashing pot where Carol was standing, cleaning the pots. She remembered Carol from the farm, Andrea told her about Sophia.

"I can take that," she said sweetly.

"It's okay, I can do my own," Will objected. She didn't want people to clean up after her.

"Really, it's no trouble," Carol insisted. "Get some rest, looks like you haven't slept in days."

That's because she hadn't. Will gave a small grateful smile before going back to the living room. It was dark now. She didn't talk to anybody, not even Hannah. Her niece was helping Carl clean the guns. They were smiling about something. It was good seeing her smile, she'd forgotten what that looked like. Hannah still looked the same, only much taller, her eyes a little colder. But she was still her, and that meant everything to Will.

Will found a corner in the deserted dining room, luckily there was a door, which meant she could have a few moments alone. She sat, leaning against the wall, and finally let herself feel. She couldn't let herself process it in front of the others. Eli was still processing what happened to his brother. She needed to be strong for him, and that meant bottling up her emotions until she was alone.

Charlotte was dead. She'd died thinking that Will hated her. The last time they spoke, it ended in a screaming match. Willow would never get to make up with her. They would never get past it.

She's dead.

Willow couldn't bear it. She let the tears flow freely from her eyes. I'm sorry Lottie. She should've been there. She should've gone back to the farm. She should've saved her sister. She should've saved Oliver. She should've saved Casey. She brought her knees up to her chest and sobbed.

Charlotte was gone, and Willow never even got to say goodbye.

Aunt Will was here, Hannah couldn't believe it. She never thought she'd see her again. Yeah, a part of her was still a little mad because she left the farm, but after everything with her mom, she didn't want to be mad anymore. It wasn't worth being angry, and honestly, she was too tired to be angry.

Hannah was a little weary of the new guy, Eli. She didn't trust new people, after all last time they brought in someone new, he turned and bit her mom. He mostly just sat in the corner of the living room with a blank expression. She found herself observing him, as though he were an animal in a zoo. He had messy brown hair and a few cuts and fading bruises around his eye. Whatever happened to her aunt and Eli, it didn't look pretty. His hazel eyes seemed to be completely void of emotion. She didn't trust him, but she was curious about what happened.

Her gaze was torn away from Eli when she felt a tap on her shoulders. She turned around to see Carl there. She'd been cleaning the guns before getting distracted.

'You O.K.' Carl asked. Since this was how they could talk privately now, Carl practiced his signing everyday. It was getting to a point now where Hannah rarely had to repeat herself with him, like she did everyone else.

'Yeah. Got distracted.'

She knew she could tell Carl her worries about Eli, they told each other everything. This included Carl's little crush on Beth. The first time he told her, they were standing together on watch about a week ago. It took everything in her not to burst out laughing. He had as much of a chance with Beth as Hannah did with Harry Potter. Sure, the latter was a fictional character, but the sentiment remained. Beth was like an older sister to them. There would be nothing more that happened between them.

'Do you trust him?' Hannah asked, her eyes flickered towards the young man in the corner.

'I don't know. He is stranger, but your aunt trusts him,' he pointed out. Carl told her exactly what happened in the grocery store, how her aunt confessed that she'd been wrong about the group.

Finally, Hannah thought. It would've been more helpful if she'd realized this like six months ago when they were still at the farm. A part of her wondered if having Aunt Will around would've made a difference, if it would've changed how things happened.

No one could've stopped her mom from going into the forest that night. It had taken her a while, but she finally realized it. No matter what, her mom would've followed Shane into that forest. He would've still stabbed her and left her to die. Randall would've still turned and bit her. Hannah would still hate Shane; she would always hate him.

"You're daydreaming again," Carl said vocally this time. Hannah snapped out of her thoughts.

'Sorry.'

'You sure you are okay?' He asked. She gave him a small smile.

'Yeah, I'm okay. Are you?'

'Yeah.' She knew that wasn't entirely true, just as he knew she wasn't entirely okay either.

"Besides comic books," Hannah started, changing the subject, "what other stuff did you do before?"

"Why are you asking?" Carl questioned.

"Well, we talk all the time, we play cards, clean guns, go on watches together… you're my best friend but I don't know a lot about who you were before," she explained.

"I did normal things," he shrugged, "like: played soccer, hung out with friends, watched TV, listened to music."

"What music did you like?" She asked.

"I dunno, everything I guess. My dad loves country, my mom too."

"I like rock," she added. Carl gave her a curious look.

"But how…?" He drifted off befuddled. Hannah gave him a small smile.

"Common misconception about deaf people, we can listen to music, just not the same way hearing people do," she explained. "If the music is loud enough, we can feel the vibrations."

"Whoa… that's really cool," Carl said in awe. "I didn't know that."

"Most people don't," she shrugged.

"But you've never actually heard music, right? Like lyrics and stuff?" Carl asked.

"No," she said after a beat. "I mean, I probably did when I was little, and hearing, but I don't remember."

It wasn't long after that that they went to bed. Well, forced to go to bed after Rick and Daryl told them too. Eli moved from his corner and went to the dining room where her aunt was sleeping. She knew it was dumb to be so worried, but she didn't like the idea of him being alone with her aunt. Hannah's make-shift bed was next to Beth's, they were both close to the wall. Carl slept across the room.

The Next Morning:

Hannah was the first one awake, just as she always was. Glenn was on watch this morning. Surprisingly enough, he was alone. There wasn't much light, which meant that it must be early dawn. Hannah put back in her implants. Her eyes drifted over the group, she didn't see her Aunt Will or Eli. A part of her wondered if maybe she'd left again, until she remembered that they were in the dining room. The door was left wide open. Hannah quietly crept over and peaked in. Aunt Willow was asleep, curled up on the ground. She used her pack as a pillow. Eli was asleep a little bit closer to the threshold. Or, at least, she thought he was asleep. As Hannah peered into the room, she saw his hazel eyes meeting hers. She jumped back and quietly scurried to the living room.

She went back to her makeshift bed and pulled out her book. She'd finished The Hunger Games the previous day. Hannah loved it, almost as much as she loved Harry Potter. It was a story about survival in a ruined world. Normally, Hannah read books to escape the crappiness that is her life, but this time it stuck with her because of how similar things were to Katniss. Sure, she wasn't exactly in an arena pitted against twenty-three other kids, but Hannah was still fighting to survive in a ruined world.

Now, she was reading a book she'd found when they first cleared the house. There was a small library in one of the bedrooms. There wasn't much selection, but she settled on an old tattered copy of The Princess Bride. Seeing the title made her smile, her Granny loved that movie. She didn't know it was a book. Perhaps an escape to a fairytale land where everything ends happily is exactly what Hannah needed at this moment. Hannah removed her implants, something she only did to sleep, and leaned up against the wall. If she was going to escape, she might as well do it right.

Hannah was a few chapters in when someone tapped on her shoulder. Hannah jumped up slightly and looked up to see Carl standing there.

'I want to show you something,' he signed.

Hannah put her implants back in her ears and dog-eared the page in her book. She got up from her spot and followed Carl out of the room. He led her up the winding stairs to the bedrooms. No one from the group ever actually stayed in the rooms, just in case they had to run fast in the middle of the night. Besides, there was safety in numbers, Hannah knew that she felt safer being around her family. Still, occasionally Hannah really wanted to sleep in a bed.

"Why are we up here?" Hannah asked.

"Just trust me," he said.

He led her into one of the rooms, one that obviously belonged to a teenager. The walls were painted a dark forest green, the walls were covered with posters of the Atlanta Braves and of movies like The Dark Knight. The bed was messy and unmade, and clothes strewn across the floor. There was a desk with a white laptop sitting on top of a desk. Hannah didn't look at the bedrooms this time, well, minus the one where she found the book. After that, she didn't need to look at the other ones. He sat her down on the bed.

"Close your eyes," Carl instructed. Hannah huffed but did as she was told. "Hold out your hands."

Hannah followed his instructions. She felt something big drop in her hands. It was somewhat circular and had buttons on the top.

"Open your eyes," he said. Hannah opened them to see a blue portable CD player sitting on her palms. "Cool, right? I didn't think these things still existed. I guess whoever lived here before kept one for whatever reason."

Hannah was stunned. She didn't know what to say to him. He grabbed a pair of big headphones from the desk, along with a CD.

"I checked the batteries when I found it, it still works," he explained. He passed the headphones over to Hannah and plugged them in. She placed them over her head so they covered her ears like ear muffs. She had a hard time hearing Carl as he continued to talk.

'I can't hear you,' she explained.

Carl sat on the bed next to her and handed her the disc. She put the CD inside and hit play. The first song queued up and the opening chords began to play.

'His taste in music sucks but…' Carl signed stopped upon seeing the look on Hannah's face.

She'd never heard anything like this before. The way the melody fit perfectly with the lyrics. The music moved fast and started off loud. When the lyrics began, the background music toned down yet still remained upbeat. It kept changing, slowing down and speeding up along with the words. It was beautiful. Hannah couldn't keep the tears from rolling down her face. She looked over at Carl.

'Are you okay?' He asked.

'I…' she couldn't even describe how amazing this was. 'I'm perfect. Thank you.'

No one had ever done anything like this for her. It felt as though she was being transported to another planet. Actually listening to the music, it was something entirely new, but somehow felt familiar. Sort of like going home after a long time away. She wasn't even embarrassed by the fact that she was crying in front of someone. It was magical.

A little bit shorter than usual, I'm sorry, I just wanted to get this chapter out. Also, sorry for the delay, I hit some massive writers block. I hope the Carl/Hannah scenes make up for it. If you're wondering the song she's listening to is She Is by The Fray (no real reasoning behind it, I just like The Fray and that happened to be the first song on one of their albums). Anyway, please tell me what you think! I love getting your feedback. I'll try my best to update soon!