Carol (with Sophia still clutched tight to her) ran into Shane approximately five feet from the farmhouse door, stalking out with enough fury in his expression that she took an impulsive step back. Lori's voice was still loud from inside the house, chatting with Andrea if she had to take a guess, and it wasn't especially mysterious why Shane was so pissed. She didn't bother asking him if he knew where Daryl was.

She found Glenn and Maggie a few minutes after, tucked behind a tree with barely enough space between them to breathe. She didn't even let her step falter before moving on.

By the time she tracked Dale down, Shane had managed to make his way over, gesticulating angrily in some form of confrontation or other. She wasn't sure what was going on, but the way Shane's hand opened and closed back and forth, forming a rough parody of a gun before sealing into a fist again, made her reasonably confident that she didn't want to find out.

She couldn't find Herschel, and simultaneously found herself questioning whether he'd help even if she could track him down.

Beth was sitting on one fence, feet crossed at the ankles as her legs tapped merrily against the painted wood. Jimmy sat beside her, balanced with his back against one of the posts, one leg touching the ground and the other cocked. She didn't bug them either; they probably wouldn't know anyway, probably wouldn't have noticed much beyond their own little world.

Rick - when they finally found him - was in his own world, too, staring at the barn like it held the key to all the mysteries of the world, answers to all the questions he had and some he didn't even know existed. He heard them, though, processed the rustling of the grass that Carol hadn't even registered. "You lookin' for Daryl?"

"Yeah." She nodded, pretending she didn't take comfort in the way Sophia slid out in front of her and pushed back against her legs, hand still clutching Carol's. "Sophia said he was hurt and wanted to make sure he was okay."

"He's not here."

Carol ignored the stab of worry at that. "Then… where is he?"

"Ran into some trouble out there. Some new people, too. Went to bring 'em back."

Carol blinked. "Alone?"

Rick shrugged, eyes never leaving the chains on the door. "Yeah." A moment's pause, then, "He wanted it that way."

She could just walk away. She could take her daughter and head back to the house, could pick her battles as she'd done so many times before. Could tell herself it didn't matter. Yeah, she should do that.

She should.

She didn't. "How do you know?"

That, at least, seemed to snap him out of his contemplation. "It's Daryl."

Carol blinked. "Yeah. And?"

"It's Daryl," Rick echoed, looking vaguely gobsmacked. "He hunts alone. He practically defined standoffish loner, Carol. I'm sure he'd say something if he wanted things to work out different."

"Did you ask him? Did you even know he was hurt?" She wasn't quite sure why she was saying it all, why she was running the risk of antagonizing the leader of their little community, but she couldn't stop herself either. Couldn't scrub out the memory of Daryl being dragged into that bedroom for emergency surgery anymore than she'd been able to scrub out the blood from his shirt afterwards.

He didn't give an answer, but at least he wasn't still staring at that damn door. She didn't need the answer anyway, not when she knew the answer. "You might be our leader, Rick, and you've led us this far… But if you're leading, then people are following you. And not everyone's going to ask for what they want. You're responsible for everyone, but that's not just about survival."

For once, she didn't think twice about walking away, about turning her back on Rick and heading back towards the house. By the time she reached it, Rick was back to staring at the barn.

– – –

When Daryl came back, it wasn't just Daryl.

He was on the first horse, yeah, but there was a boy strapped just in front of him, hands tied together with rope. Another horse trailed just behind him, two girls - Maggie's age, or maybe Beth's, or maybe somewhere enigmatically in between - seated atop it who Carol failed to recognize; the rider of the third horse was equally unfamiliar.

The only question running through her head was simple. "Who are they?"

She didn't realize she'd asked it out loud until her daughter was answering, just as quiet as usual and yet oddly confident. "That's Deanna-" A single shaky finger pointed towards the redhead steering the middle horse before diverting to the girl behind her. "Benny." And then a direct line to that third horse. "Wes." In the end, she said simply, "They helped."

"Oh." It was odd, really, watching her daughter know more about a situation than Carol herself. Or, perhaps, less odd than vaguely frightening. So many years spent in protecting her daughter from the realities of… well, of everything… and then all that effort disappeared the one time Carol wasn't there to shield her. Yeah, she hadn't always had all the answers, but she'd at least had more than Sophia… and now she didn't. "What are they doing here?"

"They don't have a group."

"And they want to… join ours?" Sophia nodded. "Oh. Who's the other one?"

"That's Randall. He's a bad man." She said it simply, bluntly, and Carol found herself hoping that Sophia not going into detail was because she didn't actually know the details.

"And what's he doing here?"

Sophia shrugged. "Mister Daryl said he had information."

"Oh. Okay." Carol stored that little piece of information away before smiling gently down at her daughter. "C'mon, sweetie, let's go find out what's going on."