AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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Daryl could look around him and tell that if he said that he wasn't particularly pissed about D.C., he'd be in the minority.

They'd gathered together, crowded—and with more than one of them, and Daryl wasn't entirely sure it wasn't himself, smelling a little too rank to be in such close quarters after a long day of running about and killing as many approaching Walkers as they could—in the living room of the house that Abraham was occupying with some of the group.

Abraham had delivered the bad news. No one was asking how it was, exactly, that Eugene got the injured jaw and lost the tooth—everyone could figure it out. And from the looks of them? Everyone wanted to give him more than he got.

It had all been a lie. Everyone, if they were honest with themselves, had at least suspected—at one time or another—that Eugene's story wasn't quite accurate. He spoke with assuredness about something he'd have no way of knowing about. He promised them D.C. was there. He promised them that there was a safe haven for them all. He promised them the place held everything they could possibly even want from it. You name it, it was there, and Eugene was sure of it.

Even when Daryl told himself to believe the story that Eugene sold, he didn't believe it. Not really. It wasn't quite the mirage that Merle told Sophia it would be, but it was something like that.

They needed something to believe in. Eugene gave them that.

Daryl realized, now, that he didn't care at all about D.C. What he wanted wasn't Washington, D.C. And he figured that, given a little time to let go of the letdown, everyone else would realize that what they wanted wasn't really Washington, D.C. either. They wanted what they'd been promised it held. They wanted what they dreamed it held.

Really, what was that? Some damn place where they could be safe. Somewhere where they could lead normal lives—or at least as normal as any life might ever be these days.

Maybe a place where there was more people—but Daryl could really do without that.

Basically, they didn't want Washington, D.C. Each of them simply wanted what it represented to them, whatever that was. And Daryl figured there was no reason in the world that somewhere else couldn't offer that to them, even if it wasn't D.C.

They'd found this place, after all. It was a bust and it would take too much work to set it up than it was worth, but that meant that if this place was out there? Other places were too. Better places.

No, Daryl wasn't invested in Washington, D.C. at all. He didn't think the government was ever going to bail them out and offer them some kind of sanctuary. The government, as far as he could remember, had never done a single damn thing to really help him in his life—and he didn't imagine they were going to start to now.

If he was honest with himself? He thought that those who were highest up in the government, those that might have been able to offer some kind of safety or sanctuary, had problem done what they could to high tail it out of D.C. and get to wherever the hell it was really safe—if such a place existed—and they'd left the rest of the sorry assholes of the world to fend for themselves.

Daryl didn't figure that they were going to bail them out. Not at all.

But they didn't need the government. They didn't need other people. All they needed was a good place to start with and a little give a damn and they could build their own sanctuary.

Still, seeing that everyone was somewhat sour about the whole thing, and feeling that his optimism was probably only singular to him at the moment, Daryl excused himself from the space full of mopey faces and went outside the house to stand in the street and smoke a cigarette.

"I get it…" Abraham's voice said, coming up behind Daryl and startling him as he stood there contemplating what exactly they'd need if they were going to build some damn super-community from scratch that would rival even Woodbury.

"What?" Daryl asked, realizing he'd apparently missed something and it seemed important.

"You don't want to keep going with us after the shit we pulled," Abraham said. "I get it."

"Keep going?" Daryl asked, suddenly feeling entirely lost in this conversation.

"That's why the hell you came out here," Abraham said. "To get your shit together to tell us your group's not moving on?"

Daryl furrowed his brows at him.

Maybe they were all thinking a little too much these days—if that were possible.

"Moving where? Out of here? We gotta move outta here. Three days with all of us here, calling up Walkers like ringing a dinner bell? Fuckers will tear the place down around us," Daryl said. "We're moving on. Not to D.C., but we're moving."

"What Eugene said, it isn't there," Abraham said. "But D.C.? It'll be there."

Daryl hummed.

"And you heard Alice," Daryl said. "Hell—everybody did. Shit's the first damn place got overrun. Don't even have to be no scientist to know that. Everybody lookin' to the government to help 'em out when the shit got bad. We're steerin' away from D.C. Head on, find something like this but ain't going under. That's what we're doing."

Abraham looked at him.

The man looked exhausted. He looked, in this moment, more tired than he'd looked the whole rest of the trip. He looked more tired than Daryl had ever seen him. And why wouldn't he? He'd put everything he had in this dream of getting to the promise land of D.C. and now the whole thing had been snatched away from him.

"You're comin' with us," Daryl said. "Everybody wants to come—coming. But we're movin' out in the morning. Ain't waiting for the damn Walkers to tear down every board of that fence and come after us in our sleep—I got a family. Gotta get 'em somewhere safe. Ain't D.C., but it ain't here neither."

"Not all of us have family," Abraham said.

Daryl was struck when the man, broken as he seemed at the moment, turned to start back inside the house where all the other sad faces sat comforting one another over a loss they hadn't seen past yet.

"Do now," Daryl called out.

Abraham stopped a moment, but didn't respond. Then he ascended the porch steps and stepped back inside.

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"Fuck you!" Merle spat, doing his best not to laugh. It didn't matter if he laughed or not, though, the damn bitch had some kind of magical powers. As long as she was looking at him—or really anyone else for that matter—she seemed to be able to read their minds.

Sadie hummed at him.

"You like it," Sadie said, not trying to hide her own smile at all. "You do. You like it. You like me."

"I'd like to suffocate your ass," Merle responded.

He was lying on his back and she was lying half on top of him, propped up on his body like he was a mound of pillows and she was the queen of the world. That wasn't the bad part. Merle never had a single damn qualm about some woman wanting to practically rub her tits all over his body and keep them damn near in his face.

The problem was that, every now and again, she did this thing just to fuck with him where she moved suddenly and trailed her hair over him to tickle him.

They'd both discovered that it tickled accidentally—he hadn't known that she'd be able to tickle him and she hadn't known that it would work that way, but it had. And now? Now she was doing it for the hell of it. She'd wait, lure him into thinking that she was done with the game, and then she'd start again.

And there was no way to win because she howled when he yanked her hair to reprimand her for the act and he was sure she woke everybody in the whole place up. So he'd stopped yanking her hair.

She repeated the act and he grabbed her face, pulling it so that she'd look at him again.

"I'm gonna poke you in the fuckin' eye!" He said, drawing out his words.

She furrowed her brows at him.

"You would really kill me over something so—stupid?" She asked.

Merle stopped.

First, he'd been kidding. He'd been sure that she knew that. She seemed to know everything else. Secondly, he wasn't too sure how poking her in the eye was going to kill her—not if he didn't do it with a bayonet.

Of course, he wouldn't have really poked her in the eye either. The tickling, though annoying, really wasn't pissing him off that bad. She more than made up for it in other ways.

"How the fuck I'ma kill ya?" He asked. "I was joshing you."

She walked her fingers up his chest, leaning back into a more comfortable position, and he released the hold he had on her chin.

"You blind me? You'll kill me," Sadie said. She shook her head at him, serious for the moment and he knew it. "I can't survive—not now—without my eyes. Before…maybe but…"

Merle frowned.

"But?" He asked, having learned by now that she wouldn't respond to anything that wasn't a clearly spoken word or some gesture that she seemed to have memorized meant one thing or another.

Sadie shifted and sat up fully, beside him. She frowned at him in the lamplight—they always had to sleep with the lamps on. Merle hated it, but she insisted—so they did. Even he wasn't sure why, honestly, it was that he felt so inclined to give her what she wanted, even if it wasn't something that he wanted.

"It's no life," Sadie said, shaking her head. "It's no life I want. I'd—if that happened? For real? Not…not you joking…for real? You would put me down?"

"Kill you?" Merle asked, immediately uncomfortable with the turn that these had taken and wishing that he hadn't accidentally steered the conversation there.

"Promise me?" Sadie asked.

"Fuck if I'm gonna promise you I'ma kill your ass!" Merle responded.

Even he felt the irony of it. How many people had he killed since this whole thing started? Twenty? Thirty? More?

But those had been different. Those killings had been because he was doing a job. Those had been because he had to do what he had to do. He had to kill to keep himself alive—one way or another—and so he'd done what he had to do.

He didn't kill for sport, and he certainly didn't kill people he…

Cared about. People he cared to see keep on living.

"Ain't gonna kill your ass," Merle said, reaching and catching Sadie's wrist, tugging at it so she'd look at him again.

"Please," she said. "Just—not just because—not right now—just—if it happens? Promise me?"

Merle squinted his eyes at her.

"You're scared," he commented.

She dropped her eyes and Merle brought his hand to her face and turned her back toward him. It took her a second, but she rolled her eyes in his direction.

"You're damn terrified," Merle said.

She tried to turn away from him again and he held her face. When her eyes rolled back in his direction, she closed them—she shut him out. That's how the hell she shut him out.

And it dawned on him.

She shut him out. She shut everything out. She closed her eyes and she was alone—but the most alone that she could be. She didn't like the lamp out because when it was pitch black, she couldn't see shit and she was alone.

If she went blind? She wanted him to kill her—she trusted him to kill her—so she wouldn't be alone and terrified in the darkness.

Maybe she was right. Maybe it was a death sentence for her at any rate. Maybe any of them, blinded, wouldn't survive long in this world.

And left the fuck alone? Alone and terrified in the pitch black forever? Maybe none of them would want to.

Merle shook her and she finally opened her eyes to him again. Even in the faint light of the lamp, he could tell the white around the blue parts was red and wet. It shined in the low light.

"Yeah," Merle said. "OK? Yeah. Shit ain't gonna happen. But—it does?"

He didn't say it, but he nodded his head and she visibly drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself from whatever she was working herself into, before she nodded back at him.

He reached, catching her this time at the top of her arm, and pulled her down toward him.

"Go the fuck to sleep," he said. "Nobody dies tomorrow…but we don't sleep? Damn sure gonna feel like it."

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AN: And to go ahead and comfort those of you that I'm sure will say it, or at least worry about it, there is plenty more Caryl coming up. It hasn't gone anywhere. LOL There are always other parts/pieces/people in my stories.