AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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There was no reason anymore to count the number of days that they travelled or how much distance they covered each day. There wasn't a destination in mind for anyone and there was no task at hand to save the world. That had all been left behind them when they'd left the housing development and struck out looking for something new—a new plan, a new idea, a new dream…whatever it might be that they found along the way.

Still, Daryl counted and he was pretty sure that everyone else kept track of it too.

Six days after they left the housing development, they were caught up in a rain storm that might as well have been a monsoon. That first rain turned into thunderstorms that lasted for three days, off and on but mostly on, during which time they holed up in what had once been a store of the kind where you could buy anything you wanted from food to toilet paper to decorative items for your living room.

Admittedly, they'd chosen that location because, even though it had been picked through, it appeared to have been picked through closer to the beginning of all this hell when people were mostly interested in taking things like televisions and phones and left behind all the real valuables like toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, and flats of water jugs that were filled and sealed with clean water.

There was even a stock of canned goods and such that was good enough they couldn't stand the idea of leaving it behind.

So, after their short stay there, they'd taken several of the wagons that the gardening area had to offer and turned some of the people into living pack mules to haul the stuff with them. Eugene was their first choice for hauling as much as one person could—part of the silent punishment they were giving him for being essentially useless in this world—but others helped simply because what they were towing along with them was important to everyone.

Now it had been ten days since they'd left that shopping center.

One of the wagons had been abandoned, entirely emptied of its supplies, and the rest of the stuff was dwindling.

And, frankly, Daryl saw no real relief for them in sight.

Tara had appointed herself their "housing locator," and had designed her own fancy title for the job—one that Daryl didn't really bother to remember—but she'd basically found exactly what they'd found all along—a place here or there to pass a night, but nothing worth keeping. They'd stumbled across, now that they knew what they were looking for, a few more housing developments, but they were all wrong in some way. Some didn't have any walls at all, some had walls that had already been torn down by Walkers trying to get in for one reason or another—they never went in to find out what had happened inside the walls—and some simply looked like, even if their walls were intact, they wouldn't remain that way long enough for them to do anything about it.

In short?

There wasn't much promise that things were going to turn around any time soon.

When it was almost time for them to start getting ready to face another night, they'd split as they normally did these days. At the road they left one group with the supplies. That group acted as a hub for everyone else. From there, one group went in search of housing—usually Tara, Glenn, and Michonne—while another went for water and another went to search for any supplies in nearby houses that weren't fit to stay in.

Daryl was almost always on the job of finding food—and specifically that meant meat.

This evening they'd stopped at a pretty good place for him to find something, if there was anything to be found, and he'd taken Sophia with him.

They weren't trusting her yet with the more powerful guns, but Daryl had found her a BB gun at a store they passed along the way and the thing packed a pretty good punch. She could take down small game with it and she could do it quietly. Usually, while he was looking for something larger and more substantial to feed them a more belly busting meal, Sophia could bag more than a handful of squirrels, birds, or other small animals that would serve for some kind of stew to carry with them or, in the case that nothing else was around for the killing, would feed them for a night.

Daryl watched her, as soon as they'd hit the woods, "setting up" for her own little hunt.

He felt an odd sense of pride, even though he had really nothing to be proud of. He and Merle had both critiqued her stance and her focus, and Daryl had taken the time to go over the basics of "shooting" with her which he repeated when he gave her the air rifle, but really any ability she had seemed to be her own natural ability—and she seemed to have a good deal of that.

He didn't really have anything to be proud for—she'd done it all herself and would only get better because she wanted to get better and put the effort in—but still he got a kick out of watching how serious she was when she prepared herself for "the great hunt" that she did each evening.

Once she was in place, scanning tree tops for anything that she saw moving and thought she could take down, Daryl stepped his way through the thicket and started searching for his own kinds of tracks a few feet from Sophia's spot.

It didn't look like there would be much chance of finding anything—not close by and not in a hurry—and the light was failing faster tonight than he'd counted on.

The days were getting shorter.

A half an hour passed, maybe an hour, and Daryl hadn't found a thing. He kept casting glances back toward Sophia, and he circled back once or twice to make sure she was fine, but she was content. Even if he brought nothing back for them to eat, she was amassing a pile of assorted birds and squirrels that—though they'd take longer to clean than they might normally be worth—could be used to make something to feed the grumbling masses they'd left back at the black top.

"If you don't shut up about your fucking jaw I'm going to wire it fucking shut!"

The sound rang out, immediately helping Daryl to situate himself and to locate with assuredness where they were in relation to the road and the group they'd left behind.

It also told him that it was time to pull in the "hunt" because the troops were getting rowdy and tired—and one of these days? Alice was going to kill Eugene.

Daryl walked back toward Sophia, no longer trying to watch his crunching about in the leaves and undergrowth. As he approached, he watched her pop off a shot and drop some creature that was too slow or too stupid to get away. He saw her track it, with her eyes, to the ground so that she'd know where to retrieve it, and then she stood up, grinning at him from ear to ear.

"What the hell was that?" She asked.

"Watch your mouth," Daryl scolded, not really caring but feeling that he owed it to Carol to say it at any rate. Sophia smiled a little wider if it were possible.

"What the heck was that?" She asked, choosing different vocabulary.

"That was the sound of the damn wild Alice stalkin' a bitching Eugene, probably," Daryl responded.

"What'd you get?" Sophia asked, clearly noticing that Daryl was empty handed besides the gun that he'd carried with him when he went.

"A whole lotta jack shit's what I got," Daryl said. "Looks like you cleaned up."

Sophia looked at the pile next to her of slaughtered woodland creatures.

"I did alright," she said, false modesty in her voice. "I have to get the rest."

"Walkers?" Daryl asked.

"None," Sophia said. "You?"

"Two," Daryl said. "Not together."

"You didn't even kill a single squirrel, Daryl?" Sophia asked, suddenly popping one of her hands up on her hip and cocking her head at him. He almost laughed at the stance, but he bit the inside of his lip to keep from showing anything to her.

"Leave the little shit for you—damn Annie Oakley—that's your job, ain't mine," Daryl responded.

She made a gesture as if to say that he was stating the obvious. She was clearly the better person for the job.

Daryl did chuckle at that.

"Get the rest of your damn critters and let's get the hell back up to the road before they turn Eugene into a Walker pack mule," Daryl said.

Sophia trotted off, disappearing almost entirely into the overgrown mess of new tress, vines, and bushes that the woods had to offer. Daryl started to gather up her already collected spoils, filling up the burlap bag they were using to haul them around in, but he dropped the bag when he heard her squeal.

He darted in the direction that she'd just come from, knife in hand and expecting to come face to face with a Walker that had taken her by surprise, but as soon as he hacked his way into the area where she'd gone, he found that there wasn't a Walker there.

There was a man and he was standing in a small clearing area with his hand wrapped around Sophia's arm. In her surprise, she'd apparently dropped her gun and forgotten about her knife, but she was doing her damnedest to beat the man with a dead squirrel while he protested the act.

"Get your fuckin' hands off my kid," Daryl commanded, closing the distance between them, knife raised and ready to attack.

He had no qualms whatsoever about killing this son of a bitch, and he really wanted him to know that ahead of time.

"Woah…woah…I'm not hurting anybody," the man said, holding up the hand that he'd been using to fend off Sophia's squirrel attacks in surrender.

"Still ain't let go of my fuckin' kid," Daryl pointed out.

At that, the man looked at Sophia like he hadn't quite realized that he hadn't let her go—like it was something that he'd been interested in doing but forgotten to do. He let go of her and she sprung forward, darting behind Daryl. He felt her hands on his back, digging into his flesh, to let him know that she hadn't gone anywhere beyond his reach.

"What the hell you want?" Daryl asked.

"I've been following you all," the man said. "About—a week? I followed the Asian boy and the others down to a place, not far from here, where they're planning to have you stay for the night. I came up through the woods, meaning to come out behind the rest of the bunch at the road and wait, but I stumbled upon the two of you hunting."

Daryl stared at him, not sure what to make of him at the moment.

"Daryl, right?" The man asked. "Your daughter—she's…she's Sophia. Your wife is Carol. Eugene is the man that everyone's always yelling at and…everyone tells Alice to be quiet…and Andrea walks backwards a lot and Michonne tells her that she's going to fall—but she never does."

Daryl swallowed, confused.

It was clear that what the man said was true. He was following them. He'd been following them for at least a few days, and he'd been following closely enough that he was learning their names and he was learning about them.

But what Daryl still didn't understand, honestly, was why the man was following them. If he wanted something from them, why not just have tried to take it by now? Why follow them so far and learn so much useless information?

"What the hell do you want?" Daryl asked, lowering his voice again.

"I just want a chance to talk to you," the man said.

Daryl grunted at him and nodded his head, but when the man didn't respond, both his hands up now in surrender while he stood a foot from Daryl's blade, Daryl finally spoke again.

"Talk! Ain't nobody stoppin' you," Daryl barked. "But when you done talking, you best start walking. In some other damn direction—you fuck with my people? Biggest worry you're gonna have is which is gonna be the one that's gonna kill you."

The man shook his head, lifted his hands a little higher.

"I think you misunderstand me," the man said. "I don't mean you any harm. Look around—I'm alone. All I've got on me is a revolver—four bullets—and a knife. And you don't see either of those. I'm not looking to hurt anyone. I want to help you."

"Help me?" Daryl asked.

"Help you all," the man said. "I just want to talk to you. My name's Aaron. I come from a safe place—a community…a town…and I just want to help you. I think you'd all fit in well there. If we could just talk…"