AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

We've got a little relationship building before there's too much action (if you've read anything of mine, you know how I am about that kind of thing) so bear with me here!

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

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"People sure do pack a lot of shit," T-Dog mused.

The decision to break into the room next to them which, thankfully, was also free from Walkers, followed their return to find that T-Dog had barely begun to pick cars clean and they'd already hit the proverbial jackpot of supplies from vacation-bound travelers.

Now T-Dog was sitting on the bed in their claimed motel room, organizing and reorganizing a small stash of candy bars that he was considering consuming for dessert. He was also working his way through the Payday bar that he'd already ripped open.

On the other bed, Carol was stretched out in pajamas that were new to her—pajamas that she'd seemed quite happy to find in one of the suitcases they'd burrowed through. She was watching T-Dog because he was the one that had been doing most of the talking, and she was absentmindedly trailing her fingers around and around the small swell of her belly.

"I'm talking half the stuff on that bed in there? All those boxes of food? They all came from the same car! The same one! The whole back of that SUV was loaded down with food. They must have thought there weren't any stores up here."

"Or they knew what was coming," Carol offered with a laugh.

"If that was the case, then it sure ain't done 'em no good or it wouldn't be in our storage room," Daryl said from where he sat in the orange vinyl covered chair that the motel room offered, he kept it sitting in the doorway so that he could be in the room, but also see out. He could also smoke there without feeling like he was bothering either of his travelling companions. He lit a cigarette for himself and gazed out the door. "The fires are burning out there again. Just over that ridge over there. If I had decent binoculars, and not those cheap ass ones we got, I believe I could see the camp."

"There's way more than one fire," T-Dog said. "Way more than one camp."

"I saw three earlier," Carol said.

"There's more than three out there," Daryl said. "If you count all the smoke columns. They spread out, though. I was talkin' about the one that looks like it's straight out over the ridge from here. Big camp."

"There's more than one fire at that camp," T-Dog said. "I could see it earlier while you two were out shooting. Even with the daylight, I could see the white smoke."

"Then they was wrappin' up breakfast," Daryl said. "More than one fire, that close together, and it's one camp. You can be sure of that. Might be a big camp, but it's one camp." Daryl tipped the chair back so that the back of it touched the open door behind him. He toyed with the lighter in his hands—it advertised a local gas station and he'd found it in a cup holder. "I got somethin' to put on the table. Somethin' I been thinkin' about. And you can both veto it or whatever but…"

"You got somethin' to say, man, just go ahead and put it out there," T-Dog offered. Carol hummed her agreement and gave Daryl her undivided attention. They both did. So he studied the lighter to keep from having to make direct eye contact with either one of them.

"I don't mind bein' alone," Daryl said. "Better than being in the company of some damn body you can't stand. But there's strength in numbers and we know that. Lookin' out there right now, there's a buncha camps spread out. More'n three. Damn near looks like stars settled down in the mountains. Could be one or two people bunched around each fire, but from the looks of it—ya know—they just keep on keepin' on. They ain't tryin' too damn hard to hide them fires."

"Unless they know they don't have any reason to hide," T-Dog offered. "We don't know how many people belong to each camp. Or what they've got to protect them."

"My point is that—I think we oughta keep this place for a while," Daryl said.

"I thought we were going to," Carol offered.

"We said a couple days," Daryl said. "Practice with the weapons. See if we could get everybody up to some kinda skill level so we were all—you know—confident. Clean out the cars. Gather supplies. Find somethin' else."

"That's the plan," T-Dog said.

"You're wanting to live in the motel?" Carol asked.

"Winter's coming," T-Dog said. "And it's going to be a helluva lot worse here than it was in Georgia. We can't build a fire here. We'll freeze to death in this room."

Daryl laughed to himself and let the chair fall forward to rest all four legs on the floor.

"I weren't talkin' about livin' here forever," Daryl said. "And believe me, I was already thinking about the winter, too." He tossed the lighter at the table, some distance away, and it skittered across the surface and slid off onto the floor. He frowned at it when it made its landing and settled somewhere just under the edge of the bed that Carol was using. "What I'm gettin' at, and maybe I'm just gettin' there like way too slow, is that there's people out there. There's groups out there that's settled enough they don't look like they're movin'. Maybe—instead of strikin' out to find somethin' on our own and just addin' our fire to the blanket of stars around here—maybe, we kinda start branching out. Not to find our own place, but to find out if there's one of them places that looks like we might kinda fit into it."

"See if there's a group to join," Carol offered.

Daryl nodded his head.

"That big group is big for a reason," Daryl said.

"Or they're three people who can't agree on a single damn thing so they have three fires," T-Dog said with a laugh. "We just assume they're big."

"So you're against it," Daryl said.

"I didn't say that," T-Dog shot back.

"Well that's what I'm hearin', so you tell me if I'm wrong," Daryl responded.

"I'm just saying that maybe we find a group out there that's jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. We haven't been gone that long from Rick's little dictatorship. I'm kinda liking what we got here. It's not a bad thing. I'm not anxious to get right back under some kind of regime that requires me to give up my bed, every single comfort I find, and most of my food just because some bitch went and got herself knocked up." Immediately T-Dog stiffened and looked at Carol. She was looking at him, too. Daryl couldn't tell what the expression on her face meant, exactly. More than likely it was her best attempt at being entirely expressionless. "Sorry," T-Dog said sincerely.

"It's OK," Carol said softly. She shrugged her shoulders. "That's what it is, right? I…" She hesitated oddly for a moment and then she smiled to herself. "It doesn't matter. I got knocked up. That's my problem. That shouldn't be yours."

Carol got up off the bed. She was wearing socks, but she wasn't wearing shoes. That didn't seem to bother her. She walked very quickly over the small space between her bed and the door, and she practically fell over Daryl as she did her best to crawl over him and get out the door. She was in such a hurry that she mumbled something like an apology to him, but climbed over him quickly enough that he couldn't even really offer her help.

As soon as she she'd cleared him, she rushed out the door and down the walkway. She offered no other response to T-Dog's repeated attempts to apologize and soothe things over. Daryl leaned his head out the door just far enough to see that, even though she rushed down to the end of the walkway to put some distance between them, she wasn't running away from the motel entirely or putting herself in any great danger.

More than likely, she just needed a minute, and then she'd be back.

"Shit, man," Daryl said. "You think you might—think about thinkin' before you open your damn mouth sometime?"

"I wasn't talking about Carol," T-Dog said. "I was talking about Lori. I was talking about the chance that we run into a group where the situation is just as bad as it was with Rick running everything. Maybe we run into a situation that's even worse. My point was just that we could get out there and we don't know what kinda people might be in those groups. We don't know what kinda laws they're living under."

"And what you said was that the worse thing that could happen was we end up in some group where some dumb ass women went and got their asses knocked up—all by themselves—and you're the one who has to end up puttin' up with that shit," Daryl said.

"That's not what I said," T-Dog declared, some anger leaking out in his tone.

"That's sure what the hell it sounded like," Daryl responded. "Listen—I don't think you gotta tell nobody here that'cha don't wanna live with the likes of Rick again. We know that. We don't want it either. That's why the hell we left. I didn't think it was somethin' I needed to say that if we got out there an' we found these groups and…and they were just as bad as what we left? We wouldn't fuckin' stay! Maybe we wouldn't even approach 'em. We'd keep our distance. At first. Watch from far out 'til we decided it was right to approach 'em and ask for more information. And if we gotta split? We fuckin' split. Just like we done in Georgia. Find our own damn place. And if they assholes? Real assholes? Like the kind that we know right away that we don't want shit to do with 'em and they no damn good? We stay the fuck away from 'em."

"Calm down, Daryl," T-Dog offered, softening his voice from the tone he'd used before.

Daryl didn't realize, until T-Dog said that, that he was steadily growing angrier and angrier about the situation. He didn't care that much that T-Dog had his reservations. He didn't really care that he'd been cut off before he was able to explain everything that he'd been stewing over—about what would be the best way to find them protected and provided for throughout the winter and, hopefully, for some time to come after that.

What he cared about was that Carol was down at the end of the walkway—staring out over the side of it like she was aching to drink in more of the same view that they'd already seen—with her feelings hurt.

Daryl didn't want her to have her feelings hurt. He knew she'd been hurt enough—in more ways than one—and he didn't want her to be hurt anymore.

And the thought that T-Dog, or anyone, had done anything to hurt her—especially because he hadn't listened to everything that Daryl had to say and he was too busy being worried about things they weren't going to let happen anyway—evidently made Daryl much angrier than he'd imagined it might.

Daryl checked his anger. He sat still in the chair and reminded himself to calm down. When he felt a little more centered. He shook his head.

"Sorry," he offered. "But you ain't had no damn right makin' her feel like you did."

"I wasn't even talking about her!" T-Dog declared again.

"It don't fuckin' matter!" Daryl spat. He reminded himself that he was trying to stay calm. He was trying not to be angry. "It don't matter that you was talkin' about someone else. You were talkin' about somethin' that could be applied to her. Somethin' she could relate to. It don't matter that you didn't call her by name, it still struck a nerve and—from the way she got out this door? I'd say it struck a pretty tender damn nerve."

"I'd say it struck a nerve that was a little too tender," T-Dog said. "I might have set her off, but that wasn't all about what I just said."

Daryl was struck by T-Dog's tone and facial expression. His stomach tightened in response.

"What do you mean?" Daryl asked.

"I mean what I said," T-Dog said. "She was pissed about what I said, maybe, but that wasn't all of it. There was more to that reaction."

"You think…there's somethin' she ain't sayin'?" Daryl asked.

T-Dog shrugged his shoulders.

"I wouldn't be surprised," he offered. "That or—hormones, but I know better than to include that possibility anywhere in the same neighborhood as my apology." He sighed. "Look—I'm really sorry. I really am. I didn't mean anything by it. Didn't mean to stir her up or start shit." He started off the bed. "I'm going to apologize, but…if she's needing someone to talk to, she might prefer it if you were the one that went out there right now."

Daryl's pulse kicked up. He almost felt a little lightheaded. There was simultaneously nothing that he wanted more, and nothing that he found more terrifying, than to go out there and comfort Carol. It made his stomach ache and his throat dry to even think about it.

"Why would she care if it was me she talked to?" Daryl asked.

T-Dog laughed to himself and he shook his head like it had been Daryl that had said the stupidest thing uttered that evening and not himself.

"Because you're like—her best friend," T-Dog said. "Or something. She told you her secret first, after all."

"She didn't mean for me to find out," Daryl offered.

T-Dog laughed to himself again. It was the same laugh as before.

"She's been hiding that pregnancy for like—probably five or six months, Daryl," T-Dog said. "Right up under everybody's nose. She's bunked with you pretty much every night since we left the farm. You really think that you finding out, when you did, was an accident? You really think if she didn't want you to find out, you'd've found out?" Daryl's stomach responded to what T-Dog said, and his muscles felt a little jittery, too. "I'm going to apologize. When she's had a little time to—handle whatever she's out there handling. But—if she wants to talk about it? I'm pretty sure she'd rather talk to you." He hesitated a moment. "Unless—you don't want to go."

Daryl got to his feet. He moved the chair out of the doorway so that he could close the door behind him. There would be no need to keep watch with both him and Carol outside the room.

He didn't say anything else to T-Dog about it. Instead, he gathered up his cigarettes and the lighter he'd lost so that he could have an excuse to be out there in case Carol didn't want to talk, and then he slipped out the door, closed it behind him, and made his way down to the end of the walkway.

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AN: Yes, I used a little nugget from that trailer.

I hope you enjoyed. Let me know what you think!