Chapter 43

So I would like to start off by apologizing. I have done the one thing I hate when I look for fanfictions to write. I abandoned my story. Granted I always intended to keep writing it, but I had two problems. One was lack of motivation. Two was a common problem among writers. I have been having a problem from getting to point A to point B. I have been feeling the pressure of being so many seasons behind but for the most part I had season 4 planned out, had it planned out for almost a year but I didn't know how I wanted it to start out. But a few nights ago my mischievous muse tickled my fancy with an idea, and thus a new chapter for all of my fans.

I would also like to thank all of my readers, old faithful readers who have been with me since almost the beginning and my new readers. So please read and I hope you enjoy. Comments and critics are always welcome.

As usual the winter months were cold but slowed the walkers down. The warmer weather of spring was a blessing because it meant that they could finally plant the seeds they had gathered last year.

But with warmer weather came more walkers. It seemed with each passing month that more and more walkers seemed to appear. With every passing day more and more walkers would show up to the fences.

The counsel decided that because of the strain the build up was causing to the fences that it was necessary to have people at the fences to thin out the crowds every day.

Adrian preferred a different method to thinning out the herds but needless to say no one liked or agreed with her method. Which was why occasionally she would sneak outside the fences to kill the walkers. She was pretty sure Daryl knew where she would sneak off to some days but he never said anything about it and neither did she.

It was just after dawn when Adrian woke up in their cell. Daryl was still asleep beside her. He was laying on his stomach, one arm was curled under his pillow, the other was hanging off the side of the bed.

Daryl insisted on sleeping on the outside of the bed. He told her once that he wanted to sleep on the outside in case anything ever happened but Adrian figured it was just an excuse to know when she got out of bed.

A group was heading out later in the day to go on a run but Adrian had decided to stay behind to hunt down whatever fresh meat she could find. She wasn't very hopeful that she would find anything bigger than a squirrel or rabbit but the traps they had set out in the woods occasionally caught bigger things such as deer and wild boars.

Smiling to herself, Adrian got out of bed without waking Daryl up and got dressed and just strapped on her hunting knife before she left their cell. When Adrian walked through the door to the cell block she seen Hershel sitting at one of the steel tables reading one of the medical books she had grabbed for him on a run a while back.

"Up early again I see." Hershel said looking up from his book to see her. "Early birds unite." she said smiling at the elder man. "So what's got you out of bed so early this morning? It's not often that one of you gets up without the other." Hershel asked her. "Nothing special. I know that Daryl is taking a group out on a run later today so I just decided to get an early start on my hunting trip for today." Adrian said rubbing at her temple with her fingers.

"Headache?" he asked nodding in her direction. "Nothing that will slow me down any time soon." she said removing her hand from her head. "Besides, I'll be back in a few hours anyway before the group takes off on their run." she told him. "Heaven forbid Daryl leave without me saying goodbye first." Adrian said laughing as she got up to go outside for a quick look around.

Adrian had actually been feeling a little off lately but she had kept that information to herself. They all had enough to worry about without her adding meaningless worries to the group as well. She especially didn't want Daryl worrying about her while he was on this run. Everyone knew that just one distracted person could get alot of people killed.

When Daryl woke a few hours later he noticed Adrian's side was empty and cold, as it sometimes was. He was waking up to her side of the bed like that more and more lately, much to his displeasure. He was going on a run with a few others shortly and wanted to make sure she was alright before he left. She had been acting differently the last few days but she refused to tell him anything. She may not have thought he noticed but he did.

Daryl got dressed and headed outside where Carol was cooking breakfast in the outside eating area they had put up as more and more people were gathering at the prison. On his way to Carol a number of people shouted their greetings to him, which made him slightly uncomfortable.

As he walked up to Carol she looked up at his with a small smile. "Just remember, I liked you first." she said. "Shut up." he grumbled. "You know, Rick brought alot of them in too." Daryl told her as he took a small bowl of meat from her. "Not recently." she reminded him. "Come on, I want to show you something." she said to him.

She turned to a young teenager and asked him to take over the cooking. The boy stopped Daryl to thank him for bringing in a deer a few days before and asked to shake his hand. Daryl, being the sassy ass he was, licked his fingers that he had been eating with and shook the boy's hand, then walked away with a smiling Carol.

They walked to the edge of the inner fence to look at a very unwelcome sight. "We may not be able to spare as many people as we hoped for this run. We seemed to have had a pile up overnight." she told him. "Well it's good pickin's so we need to hit it while we can." he told her. "Well, it seems we need more people than usual on fence duty." she told him.

"They keep piling up. They don't seem to spread out anymore." Carol said. "Well it doesn't help that all the people on fence duty tend to herd together." Daryl told her. "They keep pushing on the fences. They'll hold for now but if we don't get ahead of it soon it could be bad." she said. She then looked over to Daryl and pouted her lips. "Sorry Pookie." she said. Laughing, Daryl gently elbowed her.

"Where's Adrian? I haven't seen her this morning and if she had been outside the fences dealing with walkers she would have walked through here covered in blood by now." Carol said. Nobody liked it when she did that. It was dangerous and reckless but, as had been proved many times, you couldn't stop Adrian once she had decided to do something.

"She out huntin'. I talked to Hershel on my way out here. He said he talked to her when she got up. She said she would be back before we left for the run." he said as he continued to eat. "She feeling any better?" she said him. "She still won't say anything to me about it. I haven't pushed either. You know how she gets when you try to pry information outta her." Daryl said.

"Yeah." Carol said. When someone tried to get anything out of Adrian she didn't want to talk about, she shut down tighter than Fort Knox. Everyone had noticed that she was acting differently and had also noticed her appearance. She was paler than usual and had been looking a little sickly but nobody said anything about it.

Adrian's trip wasn't very successful but she did manage to kill a few rabbits to bring back. Adrian's headache was still thumping powerfully at her temples but she ignored it the best she could.

She got back just as the scavenging group was getting everything together for their trip. She stopped by the outdoor kitchen area that they had set up to drop off the rabbits so they could be skinned and prepared for the next meal.

After dropping off the rabbits Adrian looked at the crowd looking for Daryl. She didn't see him with the rest of the group so she decided to look for him inside.
She didn't see him in the small dining area when she first walked inside the cell block so she figured he must still be up in their cell.

As she suspected, Daryl was in their cell when she walked in. Daryl looked up to see her and gave her a distracted nod. Adrian sat on their bed and waited for him to finish whatever it was he was doing, which turned out to be counting bullets.

When he finished counting the bullets and loading them into his clip, which he then put in his gun and tucked it into the waist of his pants in the back, he looked up and properly acknowledged her.

"Hey. Heard you went out to hunt this morning. Catch anything?" he asked as he sat down beside her. "A few rabbits. It's getting harder and harder to find any kind of game around here now." she said shrugging her shoulders.

"Well it's better than nothing I guess." he said. "I suppose." she said before they both became silent, not knowing what to say.

After a few minutes Adrian caught Daryl looking at her very intently. "What? What's the look for?" she asked, confused by the look on his face. "You feelin' okay?" Daryl asked her. "Sure. Why do you ask?" she asked, even though the headache now spread from her temples to behind and between her eyes.

Daryl stood up and collected his gear. After he was finished he looked down at Adrian. She moved to get up but he gently pushed her back down onto the bed by her shoulders. He moved his hands from her shoulders to her pale face. She looked like she had dropped some weight recently, which wouldn't surprise him in the least since she hadn't been eating as much lately.

She looked like she was in pain as well. She didn't show it physically, but he could see the pain in her dull, tired eyes. "Just because you don't say somethin', doesn't make it not true." he gently told her. "I don't know what you mean." she said softly.

"I know you haven't been feelin' like yourself lately. We all see it. You're paler than usual, you've been tired alot, you're not eatin' like you're supposed to. We all see it, just ain't said nothin' about it. Mostly because we all know you'll deny it." Daryl said, looking into her beautiful green eyes.

Adrian sighed, knowing she had been caught. "It's nothing serious. It's just a headache today. I didn't want to worry you over nothing. Once I rest it will go away." she told him. "Well then you lay down and get some rest while we're gone. You went hunting while everyone else slept in so I think you've deserved a nap." he said.

Although it was true that there was always work that could be done around the prison, there was more than enough people to do those jobs and no daily task was more important that Adrian's health.

"Alright." she said on a sigh. Truth be told she didn't have the energy or the mental strength to fight him on the issue. Adrian got up and quickly changed out of her clothes and into the only long sleeve botton up of Daryl's that she had left.

She climbed into their bed and made herself comfortable on Daryl's side of the bed. Once she got comfortable, she closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh of exhaustion. She hadn't even realized how tired she was until she had laid down and closed her eyes.

Daryl leaned down and gently kissed her forehead as she started to fall asleep. He knew she had been tired even though she had only been up for a few hours but he hadn't realized she was that tired.

As he was pulling away, Adrian's hand softly grabbed onto his. "Come back to me safely." she mumbled as her hand fell limply from his as she finally gave in to sleep.

Daryl left the cell block and headed out to the rest of the group that was going on the run. He got on his bike and lead the rest of the group out of the inner yard of the prison. He seen Rick, Carl, and Michonne on the road ahead of him and decided to stop to say hi before heading out.

Carl left with the comics Michonne had brought back for him which left the three of them to talk. After hearing that they were going on a run, Michonne decided to join them. Daryl then turned to Rick.

"I left Adrian in bed. Told her to take a nap while we were gone. I don't know what kind of bug has been botherin' her lately but whatever it is, it's really takin' it outta her." Daryl told him.

"Yeah. She hasn't been her usual energetic self. She's seemed real worn down lately." Rick said. "She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit my pillow. She's only been up a few hours but she acts as if she hasn't slept all night. I would ask Hershel to look at her if I didn't think she would force him out of the cell at knife point." Daryl said. Rick laughed.

"Yeah, she probably would." Rick said. "I'll keep an eye on her while you're out." Rick reassured him. Daryl nodded his thanks and then drove off towards their destination.

The run had turned out to be a shit show. Everything had been running smoothly in the store until the wine shelves had fallen over onto Bob, their most recent addition to the prison group. As they were trying to lift the shelves off of the ex Army medic, a walker fell into the store through the ceiling. It had a waterfall of walkers after that.

They got away with only one of their own dead, a kid named Zach. But even that one was too many for Daryl. After telling Beth that her friend was dead, Daryl left for his and Adrian's cell. He hadn't really talked to anybody since he got back from the run so he didn't know what Adrian had been up to since he left.

Much to Daryl's surprise, Adrian was right where he had left her hours before. He had already cleaned up when he had gotten back so he just threw on a pair of sleeping pant and crawled into the bed on Adrian's side.

Once he was settled he got a good look at Adrian. Needless to say, she didn't look any better than when he had left her. She still looked as if she might be in some pain, she was shifting restlessly in her sleep, and she looked a little feverish in the dim lighting of their cell. Daryl decided that if she wasn't better by morning he was going to have Hershel or Dr. Caleb take a look at her, even if he had to hold her down so they could do it.

Daryl didn't get a chance to see if Adrian was doing any better the next morning. When Daryl woke up the next morning Adrian wasn't in the bed. He had taken that as a good sign until he asked a few of the others if they had seen her, to which they had said they hadn't.

Adrian Hunter was just gone without a trace.