AN: I have struggled, behind-the-scenes, for a little while with this one. It took something of a left turn at Albuquerque, and I've been sort of dragging along and trying to get it back. It was originally supposed to be, admittedly, a little easy on the serious plot and heavy on the Dixon-family experience. I felt like it was pulling the wrong way, but I didn't know how to get it back in line for myself. I've been working with two friends, though, to get my feels back on track and my mind back in the game on this one. I think I'm going to be able to get it back in line with what I wanted it to be, and I appreciate your patience!

There is a very short time jump to this chapter.

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

Woodbury wasn't going to survive without true effort to expand. The walls needed to be moved outward, just the same as they did at the prison, and there needed to be more room designated for crops and livestock. Hershel Greene, maybe, had little to offer in physical ability to help progress both communities, but he had plenty to offer when it came to ideas, experience, and expertise that came from a long life lived with the kinds of activities that would keep them alive and thriving for years to come.

Daryl thought that he saw a certain pride, and even a glow of renewed health and vigor, come to Hershel as his opinions were listened to and respected—and he moved from the job he'd thought he'd have, as really someone given something to keep him from being entirely a drain on resources—into a position of respect and admiration.

Daryl and Merle, like many people in Woodbury, spent their working hours doing whatever they were needed to do. Some days they worked on walls and fences. Some days they helped break up ground and haul out concrete and asphalt that was broken up with sledgehammers.

Today, they were clearing and setting snares—but only after following a group out to look for livestock.

One of the people sent out scouting had found quite a bit of partially domesticated livestock that could, with patience, be re-domesticated. A large group, armed with supplies for catching and moving the animals as humanely as possible had gone out. When they found the animals—this time a few cows, a few sheep in extreme need of shearing, and a small bunch of goats and pigs that, really, might as well have been the wild hogs they frequently saw—Daryl and Merle helped to capture them. The rest of the people from the group went ahead back to the community with the animals, and Daryl and Merle started the process of setting new snares in the area in hopes that they might catch more animals—either for immediate consumption or for domestication.

There was little need to be quiet, since they weren't actively hunting and could watch each other's backs for Walkers, but there wasn't too much for the brothers to say that they hadn't said to each other many times recently.

Merle was still working with Daryl and Sophia, in his free time when Daryl watched Sophia for Carol to work, to learn everything he thought he could never learn as a daddy. He was, as far as Daryl could tell, far more capable than he gave himself credit for being. Everything that he did, he saw as some kind of failure—even if it seemed he must be imagining things—while everyone else only really saw how well he was doing.

Daryl figured, really, that Merle simply had to get to a point where Merle believed in Merle.

"You hear that?" Merle asked, breaking the comfortable silence they could keep between them for hours.

"Walker," Daryl said, picking up on the growling, though it was faint given the fact that there must be some distance between them. "Feedin' from the sounds of it. Maybe more'n one. That way."

"Not that," Merle said. "Give it a second. Hear it?"

Daryl tuned his ears away from listening for Walkers and into listening for what Merle wanted him to hear.

"Animal of some kind," Daryl said.

"Cryin' for its ma," Merle said.

Daryl was just about to add a "sounds like" to the conversation, but Merle walked off before he could, and he didn't feel like tossing it after his brother. Instead, Daryl followed Merle as he listened to and sought out the sound. For a moment, Merle was as good as a bloodhound.

When they found the little thing, Daryl didn't know what they were looking at—at least not for a second. The tiny thing was trying to stand up, but almost seemed too exhausted to do so and sagged over to the side again before it gathered up strength to try once more. It looked to Daryl to be struggling, honestly. It hollered pathetically for its mother.

"It's a goat," Merle said, about the same moment that Daryl settled on what the little thing was.

"Too small to be a goat, ain't it?" Daryl asked.

"He obviously don't think so," Merle said. "Ma's gotta be around here somewhere, don't she? They don't just leave 'em this small, do they?"

"Blood, Merle," Daryl said, gesturing toward the blood that trailed away from the somewhat messy baby.

Merle followed the blood trail and Daryl followed after him. For a moment, they left the hollering baby just where he was. He seemed decently enough protected there, and they didn't want the mother to reject him if she was hanging around somewhere. There was no telling how wild goats acted, after all, especially given that neither of them had any grand knowledge of goat habits anyway.

"It ain't the right time of year for a baby, is it?" Merle asked, half to Daryl and half to himself, since neither of them would know. "When do goats have babies? They got a season? This outta season? Can they do that? Can they have babies outta season or whatever?"

"I don't know when the hell season is," Daryl said. "Don't know shit about goats…"

"Son of a bitch," Merle said, stopping short. Daryl practically skidded to a halt to keep from running into his brother. Merle saw it before he did—the two Walkers bent over the body of the doe at the end of the blood trail.

It was a shame—Daryl thought that much. What he didn't expect, though, was that it would stir up a sudden, hot and inexplicable anger in his brother.

"Son of a bitch!" Merle roared. "Maggot infested sons of bitches!"

Before Daryl could react, really, Merle rushed toward the Walkers with his knife in one hand and his bayonet arm raised. The two Walkers looked at him with the sounding of his voice, their faces dripping with the goat's entrails, and started to try to get up from their positions, but Merle had finished them both off before either really had the chance to try to make a lunge for him. And then, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, he dropped to a knee beside the dead goat and examined her with a palpable air of mournfulness—enough so that Daryl nearly felt like he should stand back and give his brother a moment.

"She was draggin' all this shit," Merle said. "Birth shit."

"Prob'ly died givin' birth," Daryl offered, not sure how to help his brother as he reported like some kind of detective on the doe's demise.

"No," Merle said. "Was dyin'. Left her kid there. Come out here—prob'ly all the way here on her own. Hell—she prob'ly knowed she was dyin'. Just tried to get far enough away to distract the fuckin' Walkers so they wouldn't eat her kid."

Daryl didn't know if animals were all that smart. Some animals he'd seen hadn't seemed to understand Walkers at all. If this goat had known they were there and had used the last of her strength to lead them out here—away from the bleating baby—then she was smarter than some animals they'd seen. Either that, or she was proof that the animals were adapting, as surely as the humans were, to their new surroundings.

Merle was back on his feet and headed back in the direction where they'd left the messy baby—probably half-frozen and still messy from his mama's body—before Daryl could spend too much time contemplating the intellectual growth of quadrupeds.

"He don't look half as big as you think a goat oughta," Daryl mused on the way back. "No mama to feed him or take care of him. And there weren't no babies with that group we took back, so there ain't no feedin' mamas. I sure as shit hate to say it, but I guess you're thinkin' the same damn thing I probl'y am. He ain't gonna make it. Most humane thing we can prob'ly do for the little thing is figure out a quick and easy way to help it…you know…go on."

Daryl winced at the thought, but he wasn't sure what to do about the little goat who would, more than likely, not live very long.

He was several steps behind Merle, so he was surprised to find that Merle had already done his best to wrap the thing in one of the empty pillow cases they carried in their sacks for whatever they freed from snares. Merle pushed himself up, put his sack back on, and scooped up the little goat. He tucked it beneath his arm, careful to hold it in such a way that it couldn't work its way toward the bayonet fastened to his cuff—if it had any desire to move at all, which didn't much seem to be the case.

Daryl couldn't help but wince as he watched Merle rearranging the baby each time it bleated some sound of discontent.

"Just tell me so I don't watch," Daryl said. "You gonna—break its neck or…?"

"No," Merle said. "Hell, no. I can't break the damn thing's neck."

"What's faster? Cut its throat? Shoot it—but that's a damn small target. That's too damn small to be a goat, Merle."

"It's a goat," Merle said, matter-of-factly. With his unoccupied left hand, he worked the zipper on his coat—a skill that he'd had to learn since losing his right hand. He zipped it up and then maneuvered his little charge enough so that a tiny head stuck out of the zipper. For a moment, the miniscule goat didn't bleat anymore. He simply looked around at a world that, at his size and newness there, must be terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time.

Merle started walking.

"What are we doing, Merle," Daryl said, falling in step behind him. "Talk to me."

"We're goin' back," Merle said. "Or you done forgot how the hell to get home?"

Daryl had questions—and he had things he might say—but he could tell that Merle wasn't in the mood to hear them and had no mind to discuss them, so he returned to the silence that had served them through the morning.

111

"Well?" Merle asked.

Daryl knew that he was hovering too close to Hershel, but if Hershel knew that, he wasn't saying anything. Hershel had cleaned the little thing up, and he'd examined it.

Hershel sighed and shook his head.

"I don't know the breed right off," Hershel said. "And goats can be tricky at times. It's possible he's under-sized. He's definitely hungry, and there are no nanny goats out there with milk. I've already checked over what we brought in today."

"There's cows, though," Merle said. "They got milk. It won't take cow milk?"

"He will. He doesn't know any better. But no cow is going to take this kid on to raise," Hershel said.

"It ain't gonna make it?" Daryl asked.

Hershel looked reluctant to answer. His expression said as much as Daryl figured words could really say about the situation.

"If we had another mother to adopt it," he said, letting the statement hang for a second. He shook his head. "It can be done, but it's a lot of work for one goat that might not make it all. He'll have to be bottle fed. Kept warm. It would be a lot for a small amount of payout. He's not a nanny, so he won't bring us milk, or kids, later."

"You don't wanna say the same thing I said earlier," Daryl said. "Might be better to just—let him go."

"It can be done humanely," Hershel said, holding the baby goat wrapped in a towel. It looked like it had very little care about anything in the world, and it had given up bleating. "He appears to be pretty weak already. He may be premature. He may have health problems we can't see right now. We have no way of knowing, really. In these situations, it's hard to say if the effort and resources put into trying to keep a kid like this alive will be worth the payout, in the end. He may already be showing signs of decline."

"He's fuckin' sad," Merle said. With his hand, he reached and practically snatched the baby goat from Hershel's hands. Hershel didn't fight him. Merle tucked it back into the crook of his arm, just as it had been earlier. "Hungry and sad. His ma died—eat up by Walkers— to keep him alive, and the only damn thing anybody fuckin' wants is to wring his damn neck. Leave him alone. Just tell me which of all them bottles we found in them barns is best."

"He'll have to eat every four hours," Hershel said. "More for the first few days. He'll make a mess—and you'll have to keep him warm. I don't think you realize how much work this may be, Merle. And—he still may not make it." Merle frowned at him and Hershel shook his head. "I understand, but raising livestock—we have to make some hard calls sometimes. Even as a veterinarian, sometimes we have to make the hard calls. His odds don't look great, and…ultimately, he's not going to have much to offer us. I'm only trying to be realistic, Merle."

Merle frowned at the baby goat tucked under his arm.

Daryl knew that his brother knew about making hard calls. At this moment, though, he didn't seem interested in hearing about that or considering it.

"You just show me the damn bottles," Merle said. "You don't got useful advice, then I don't need no more'n that."

For a moment, there was a tense sort of stand-off between them.

"You're determined to do this?" Hershel asked.

"Bottles, Hershel," Merle said, matter-of-factly.

Hershel nodded his head.

"You'll need to make sure he stays warm. You can put cloth diapers on him, just nip a hole for his tail. Don't pull on the umbilical cord. You want it to dry and drop off on its own. Feed him as much as he wants for the next few days. Every four hours after that. We'll see how he does…if he makes it."

Merle visibly relaxed.

"Thanks," Merle said.

"Come on," Hershel said. "I'll help you find some proper bottles, and I'm sure storage will have some diapers to spare."

Daryl followed after them both, already wondering how his brother was going to explain his new charge—the damn little thing riding just as contentedly as possibly, balled up in a towel and tucked in the crook of Merle's arm like that's where the hell his little ass belonged.

Daryl laughed to himself at the thought. The goat wasn't to blame for his feeling of belonging there. After all, he didn't know any better than that—that's where he'd spent most of his life already.