AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Sophia had spent two nights lost in the woods, and Carol had spent two nights crying pitifully over the loss of her daughter.
In the farmhouse, people walked around seeming a little like the Walkers themselves. Everyone seemed disconnected, detached from each other, and wholly occupied by the various concerns that were consuming their thoughts.
Daryl had spent very little time in the farmhouse. He'd eaten there, swallowing his food practically whole because he didn't care about it beyond his need to survive and to soothe the gnawing pain his stomach, and he'd bathed there. He hadn't really done much sleeping since he couldn't bear to hear Carol's crying, and he wouldn't dare to ask her to swallow back her emotions for his comfort.
Daryl knew that there was something going on with Carl. He knew that something had happened the night before. Sometime before he'd gotten in from the woods, Shane and someone else had left in search of something. By the time Daryl got out of the shower, he discovered that Shane had returned, but the other person had been killed—there was a truly thick air of mourning and sadness hanging heavy over the entire house.
Daryl knew, honestly, nothing more about the whole situation with Carl. He had only so much emotional energy, and he couldn't bring himself to expend any of it on other people's problems. Other people were going to have to handle their own damned problems.
The family who owned the house—which, from what Daryl could tell, not that he'd explicitly asked—consisted of some combination of the older couple, with the man who was medically caring for Carl, two girls, a teenaged guy, another woman Daryl figured to be about his age, and the man who hadn't returned from whatever mission he'd gone on with Shane.
Daryl could imagine that they would have preferred not to have their home overrun with strangers as it was, but he appreciated their hospitality just the same.
Sophia had been out in the woods for two nights, so Daryl packed some extra food that morning—courtesy of the old woman who seemed to be dealing with her frustrations by cooking and keeping her new houseguests employed in the kitchen—so that he could provide Sophia with something decent to eat when he found her.
Around noon, Daryl sank down beside a tree to catch his breath and drink water—and to have a long damn talk with himself.
Rick hadn't said it to him. He hadn't meant for him to overhear it. He and Shane had just been talking to pass the time while they waited on some update on the situation with Carl.
This many hours in, the police stopped looking for a missing person, and they started looking for a body.
But Daryl couldn't accept that.
This wasn't just some missing person. This was Sophia. She was ten years old. She was Carol's pride and joy, and Daryl's, too, honestly. She loved animals and making goofy faces. She was nervous and shy from Ed's rule over her during her earliest years, but she was coming out of her little shell. When she felt secure, and their home felt like a home to her, she liked to dance around the kitchen in her sock feet and make noises she invented like this silly little turkey gobble that she'd almost mastered to the point that it could fool a lot of people.
Daryl couldn't start looking for a body because, if he did, he'd be giving up on her—and he promised her that he'd never give up on her. He'd never turn his back on her. That wasn't how Dixons lived their lives. They didn't give up on each other.
But he was starting to worry.
Daryl finished enough water to keep himself from getting dehydrated to the point of dizziness. Then, he got up, set his mind again, and wandered deeper into the woods. He was headed back in the direction of the highway—moving toward the woods—and he called out to Sophia, quietly enough not to draw Walkers, as he moved.
Finally, he broke through the woods on the other side. He saw the highway—quiet and abandoned. The cars were still. Nothing stirred. He stepped over the guardrail, and he started down the road, keeping to the asphalt and looking toward the tree line like he might see some evidence of movement or life.
He'd found tracks—he'd found tons of them. They were all over the damned place. There were so many tracks, though, from Walkers and everything else, that it all ended up being nothing more than some kind of mass confusion. None of the tracks led him anywhere. Nothing showed him any hard evidence of Sophia's whereabouts.
And then he stopped.
He looked behind him, and then he looked ahead. Finally, he looked back at what made him stop. The car was the only one of its kind on the highway—at least in that cluster of cars—and the hood, which had been covered with food and an assortment of other items, was bare.
Daryl practically ran for the car. He couldn't stop himself. His heart was nearly ready to explode out of his chest, and it wasn't from the effort of running. Someone had been here. Someone had taken the supplies. He knew it could be anyone, really, but he had to believe it was Sophia.
When Daryl reached the car, his hand went straight for the driver's side door handle. His heart drummed harder in his chest than it had before. It was locked, but there was a blanket covered lump across the front bench seat that hadn't been there before. Before he busted the window out, which was his first actual instinct, he beat on the window hard.
"Sophia!" He yelled, banging on the window.
If the body under the blanket didn't move, he'd break the window.
His banging, though, woke the girl. She sat up with a start. She screamed, at first, and then her screaming stopped.
"Daddy!" She cried out. Her hands came up to the window like she could touch Daryl through the glass. In her excitement, she'd forgotten how to get out of the car.
"Unlock the door," Daryl called out. "You got the lock, Sophia. Unlock it. Pull up on the lock."
Sophia scrambled to unlock the door and the moment that the lock was disengaged, Daryl opened the door. Sophia practically leaped out of the car and launched herself at Daryl. She was always thin and gangly—built like her Mama and always in need of a few more mouthfuls of food—but she seemed a bit bonier than usual as she wrapped around Daryl with her arms and legs clinging to him like tentacles.
Daryl held her back as hard as she held him.
"You alright…you alright…you alright…" he said, pretending that he was reassuring her, but knowing that he was really reassuring himself. He couldn't seem to stop himself from saying those same two words over and over again. They rolled out of him, almost perfectly keeping time with the pounding of his heart.
Sophia, for her part, clung to him and cried into his neck, repeating "Daddy" with the same regularity that he'd adopted for his chosen litany.
Finally, he felt able to look at her and to say something different. Finally, he felt able to pull her off of him and get a good eyeful of what he'd most wanted to see in the past few days.
She was shaking, almost violently, when he rested her feet on the ground. He was shaking, too.
Her face was dirty and streaked with tears. He mopped at it with his handkerchief before he handed it to her and told her to blow her nose. Her tears hadn't entirely stopped, but he figured that she was allowed to cry them for as long as she wanted.
"I'm sorry," she said when she finally seemed able to say more than "Daddy." "I'm sorry, Daddy…I'm sorry…"
Daryl put his hands on Sophia's shoulders and held her to ground her.
"The hell you sorry for?" He asked.
"I'm sorry for—being trouble. I'm sorry…Daddy…"
"Stop," Daryl said quickly and a little more harshly than he really meant to. He surprised, her, though and at least she did stop apologizing. "Stop," he repeated, this time a little more softly. "Stop apologizin' Sophia. You ain't done nothin' wrong, OK? You ain't done not a damn thing wrong. You got scared an' you run. That was fine. You done what'cha had to do. Why'd you leave the water where Rick left you?"
"There was more of 'em," Sophia said shaking her head. "There was more of 'em and we got scared. We ran and—Carl said the road was this way and…I said it was this way." She gestured with her hands, clearly wound up from her experiences. "And he said I was dumb and I didn't know where the road was and…so I said I did too know where it was. I walked the other way, Daddy, than he did. I walked where I thought the road was, and I lost Carl. I walked away, and I thought he would follow me, but he never followed me. And then there were more of the Walkers, and then people started shooting. I heard the guns. Daddy…"
She stopped suddenly. She held onto Daryl's arms like she was afraid he might leave her or vanish. Her fingertips dug into his skin and he was reminded of how small she still was—how young.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
"Where's Mommy?" She asked.
Daryl smiled.
Daryl and Sophia had that in common—they both loved Carol with every fiber of their being. Sophia was fiercely protective of her mother. She'd spent most of her life knowing what happened to Carol—what Ed did to her. Daryl knew, too, that she'd spent a great deal of her life feeling guilty for it because everything she ever did wrong—and even things that she never actually did do wrong—came back on her mother. Sophia, in a lot of ways, was still learning to trust Daryl, but he didn't take it personally. She was a child, and a lifetime of something learned was a lot to undo.
"Your Mama's OK, Sophia," Daryl assured her. "Sad—real sad. She's been missin' you somethin' awful. It's damn near broke her heart. But she's gonna be OK now. She's gonna see you're safe, and she's gonna be just fine. She's gonna be so damn happy she won't know what the hell to do with herself. She's at a farmhouse not far from here. I'ma take you to her."
Sophia nodded her head quickly. She liked the idea of being reunited with her mother as quickly as possible.
"Let's get whatever supplies we can outta the car," Daryl said, gesturing toward the vehicle. "How long you been in there?"
"I found it this morning," Sophia said. Daryl moved to the car and started packing his bag with the items that remained there. He folded up the blanket and tied it to the top of his bag with a few pieces of a torn-up rag that he found in the foot of the car and shredded. Within a couple of minutes, he'd packed Sophia's little camp.
"You eat some of this?" he asked, pointing to the trash in the foot of the car.
"Peanut butter, crackers, and some Vienna sausages," Sophia said.
"Good," Daryl said. "You drink this water?"
"Two bottles," she said. "But…"
"But what?" Daryl asked.
She frowned at him.
"I have to pee, Daddy," she said. "But I didn't wanna come out of the car because…there was one of those things outside it."
"Gone now," Daryl said. "Come on. I'll keep watch while you pee."
Sophia clearly didn't relish the idea of Daryl staying with her while she peed, but she also clearly didn't want him not to be there. He walked with her back toward the woods—the closest way to get to the farmhouse—and he stood with his head turned and his body angled toward her while she relieved herself. He wasn't going to invade her privacy, but he also wasn't going to let her entirely out of his reach—not now that he'd found her.
As soon as she was done, Daryl planted a hand firmly on her shoulder and he started back through the woods with her.
"Where you been all this time, since you only got to the car this morning?" Daryl asked. "Where'd you sleep."
"I didn't sleep much," Sophia admitted.
"That makes at least two of us," Daryl said.
"I spent the night in a tree," Sophia said. "Like you told me. I found a good branch. Like you said at the camp in case we ever had to run from the Walkers."
"You done good," Daryl said. "Damn good. You done better, Soph, than twenty adults woulda done in the same situation."
Sophia smiled at the praise.
"Are you proud of me?" She asked.
Daryl swallowed back his amusement.
"Proud don't even start to cut it," he said. "I'm damn proud of you."
"Did I do it like a Dixon?" Sophia asked.
Daryl's heart fluttered in his chest. They'd been trying—both of them. He wanted to be her Daddy. He wanted to erase everything that she'd ever known about Ed. He wanted to erase every experience she'd ever had with the man. He couldn't, though, so he'd just have to settle for being her Daddy now. Likewise, Sophia wanted to be his daughter, but she still had miles of life behind her where some other asshole had filled the shoes that Daryl was now trying to fill.
She wanted to be his daughter, though, and he wanted to be her Daddy. And, maybe, that was really enough.
"You done it just like a Dixon," Daryl said. "You a damn Dixon to the core. And I dare any damn body to say anything different."
Sophia beamed. She reached her hand up and wiggled her fingers under Daryl's hand that rested on her shoulder. When he realized what she wanted, he lifted his hand and offered it to her. She wrapped her fingers around his hand and leaned into him as they walked back toward the farmhouse.
"I wasn't too scared," Sophia offered.
Daryl knew that probably wasn't true, but he wasn't going to push her into admitting her feelings if she wasn't feeling up to it.
"No?" He responded.
Small fingers squeezed his hand.
"I knew you would find me," Sophia offered.
"Well—I was scared shitless," Daryl admitted.
"Really?" Sophia asked, looking at him like she'd just heard the most shocking thing of her long life.
"Really," Daryl said. "Because—my lil' girl had gone missin' in the woods. And I was scared—I might not find her. I might not see her no more."
Sophia smiled softly.
"But you did find me," Sophia said. Daryl hummed in the affirmative. "And you'd find me again."
"Just for good measure," Daryl offered, "let's all try not to make that shit necessary, OK?"
"OK, Daddy," Sophia agreed. She was quiet for a moment. "But—thank you for finding me."
"Really—you done it your own self, Soph. You'da found us, eventually."
Sophia stopped short and Daryl took a step further. Their hold on each other's hands broke apart. It surprised Daryl and he turned to look at her.
Dirty, skinny, little gangly thing that she was, he turned around to find her face all scrunched up in frustration. Like her mother sometimes stood, she had a hand on each hip. Daryl didn't have to know any more about women than he knew to know that she was pissed off about something.
"What's goin' on, Soph?" He asked. "We gotta get on back now. Your Ma and Aunt Andrea's worried sick."
"I'm tryin' to say thank you, Daddy," Sophia said. "And you won't take it."
Daryl swallowed down his amusement.
"You're welcome, then," he said. "That better?"
Sophia dropped her hands from her hips. She wiped at her eyes and her nose, both probably prickling and itching from her earlier tears.
"I love you," she said. "And—I just wanted to say that, but you don't have to say it back. Not if you don't want to."
Daryl smiled at her.
"I guess I forgot it, huh?" He asked. She nodded her head. "Got so wrapped up in meanin' it that—I forgot to say it with my mouth. I do love you, though, Sophia. Love you more'n I did even two…three days ago."
Sophia looked pleased. She nodded her head.
"Good," she said, stepping forward and thrusting her hand back into Daryl's. "Because I love you more than I did a couple days ago, too. I do miss Mama, though."
Daryl tugged at her hand, not walking too fast so that his strides didn't tire her out too quickly.
"I know," he said. "And believe me—she's missed you, too. It ain't all that far. We'll be there soon."