[A/N: Lovely people! Thanks for the reviews, follows and favourites! I was pretty excited to crack 50 followers on the last chapter, so wanted to get this up as soon as possible. For those of you who have been waiting for some Asha and Daryl bonding, I hope this satisfies (for the time being anyway.)

SorrowJunky, I am tossing up on whether or not to start including some chapters from Daryl's POV. It wasn't the original plan, but I'm starting to see how Daryl's perspective might add something. We'll see... And yeah, I am avoiding your question about how I am going to play Carol, mostly because I'm not loving what I've written on that front and I might still change it.]

The day was done. The light had bled from the sky like cheap dye into water and a sprinkling of stars had appeared in its wake. The air was still. It had the feeling of exhaustion, like the earth itself was too weary to move. Much like the inhabitants of the prison.

They had returned the previous night, the residents of Woodbury piled into a school bus they had scavenged from part of Woodbury's wall. The elderly, the children and the Woodbury survivors had stumbled shell shocked and bewildered out of the bus and into the prison courtyard, hands clutching their few possessions and eyes rolling with some apprehension across the dark walls of their new home.

The expression on Carl's face when they returned was burned in Asha's mind—the contempt with which he'd looked at the new arrivals, the disgust and open hatred on his face when he'd spoken quietly with his father before storming away into the cell block. The intensity of his emotion had shocked her a little, and she was glad then that she hadn't allowed her own emotions to prevent them from bringing back the Woodbury refugees.

The day had been filled with the organised chaos of getting so many new arrivals settled in. The yard had been cleared, the flattened gate had been jerry-rigged back into place until they figured out a more permanent solution. Plans were in place to strip everything useful they could from Woodbury and bring it back to the prison.

Early in the afternoon, Asha had found Michonne and asked for her help. She had been a little surprised when dreadlocked woman had readily agreed. She supposed she could have asked Daryl, but to be honest she didn't want to make him go back there. Asha and Michonne took one of the cars and slipped out the prison. They followed Hershel's directions to the site of the previous meeting with the Governor, and then they looked for Merle. Their dead belonged in the ground. Asha supposed that after Andrea, Michonne could appreciate that.

They found him sprawled on his back in the sun near a silo. They wrapped him a sheet from the prison laundry which Asha had stashed in the car, put him in the boot of the car and took him home. In the late afternoon sun, they buried him next to Andrea.

Daryl had taken the shovel away from her at some point. Later, Rick had tried to take the shovel from Daryl, but Asha had turned on him, teeth bared, and ripped the shovel from his hands. Daryl hadn't argued and Rick and Michonne had left them alone.

Eventually the grave had been deep enough. They laid Merle to rest, struggling between the two of them to lower him into the earth, and then filling the black soil back in—all in silence as far as Asha could recall.

Asha sat cross legged on the ground at the end of the mound of freshly turned dirt. She was filthy from digging and she stared blankly in the near dark at her blistered hands. Her cracked rib was aching, a burning node of pain that seemed to be radiating heat around her torso. On the other side of the dog run, the never ending moans of the dead kept her company—though there were fewer around than usual as the area had been cleared pretty well during the day.

She jerked as Daryl suddenly walked past her, makeshift cross in one hand and a heavy slug of wood in the other. The man was damn near silent when he wanted to be. He drove the cross into the head of Merle's grave with steady blows from the chunk of wood, the noise increasing the agitation of the few walkers outside the fence.

'Merle a christian?' Asha asked.

'Nope.' He tossed the chunk of wood away and sank to the ground next to Asha.

They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the cross.

'Thanks.' Daryl said eventually.

Asha nodded. 'Didn't want to leave him out there, you know?'

Daryl nodded in return. 'That too.'

Asha's brow furrowed at him a little. What else was he thanking her for?

He saw her looking and shrugged. 'Don't think Merle ever thought anyone would care when he was gone. Hell, if he wasn't my brother I'm not sure I would. Man could be a real asshole.'

Asha gave broken, tiny little laugh.

Wasn't that the truth.

Daryl ran his fingertips through the spindly grass that filled the yard. 'Ya cared. Enough to try to make things easier for him before, and enough to tear Rick a new one after he was gone.' His blue eyes, dark in the fading light, met hers. 'Means a lot.'

She held his eyes, feeling...she wasn't sure what. 'How you holding up?' She asked eventually.

His eyes were hooded as he turned back to the grave. 'Merle... he thought he looked out for me as a kid. Thought he protected me from the old man. But really, most of my memories are of him leavin' me—or getting me into trouble and then leavin' me… Don't know why this would be any different.'

Because it's permanent. But Asha thought better of saying that. 'Cause it's your brother,' she said sadly.

She reached out and took Daryl's hand, lacing her fingers through his, ignoring the shiver of tension she felt go through him.

His shoulders hunched and his jaw rippled as he clenched it. 'Just...never thought he'd go before me. Was the toughest bastard I ever met.'

She squeezed his hand. 'Your brother wasn't a bad guy Daryl. I mean, he definitely could be an asshole, but I think he was just a bit lost...' She sighed. 'He helped me as much as I helped him. I wish he'd known that...I wish...' Her voice broke. 'I wish our last words hadn't been a fight.'

Daryl grunted. 'Ya gave him the time of day—without wanting something back in return. That's more than anyone's done for Merle in while...a long while. He knew that.'

'Your brother was gonna help me find my brother,' Asha said quietly.

'Yeah, I know.' Daryl pulled his hand away and Asha felt the loss tingle in her palm. 'But that was only 'cause ya were givin' him the time of day in the first place.'

Asha shrugged, looking back at her hands again in the dark. She remembered Merle as she had found him near the silo.

'I'm really sorry you had to find him like that Daryl.'

His face stiffened immediately.

'I… my sister had turned when we found her.' Asha hesitated, rubbing her muddy hand across her forehead as her sister's face floated into her mind, but it was hard to see her as she had been and not as she was when they had found her. She was buried in a shallow unmarked grave that Nash and Asha had dug with their bare hands. Asha wasn't even sure she could find her way back to it anymore. 'No one should have to see their family like that,' she finished sadly.

There was silence as they both stared blankly at Merle's grave.

Where'd ya learn to fight like that? Daryl asked.

Asha was grateful for the topic change.

'Nash mostly, and I've had plenty of time and plenty of dead to practice on...But my dad taught me to throw a punch when I was about 16.'

Daryl arched his brows at her.

Asha smiled sadly. 'He always said "Never start a fight, but if someone else does, you make damn sure you finish it." I think he was getting a little scared at the idea of his little girl being out in the world and not able to defend herself.' Her mouth twisted a little. 'And I have always had this knack of saying things without thinking them through—sometimes they don't go down well. He even let me practice on Nash a few times.'

Daryl's brows climbed higher. 'Ya dad encouraged ya to hit ya brother?'

Asha smiled again, wider and more genuinely this time. 'Nash is four years older than me, and even now I only come up to his shoulders, and I'm not exactly short. He was about twice my size growing up. Only way I was gonna hurt him was if he was on his knees with his hands behind his back...and probably not even then. I did get better though.

'Ya dad teach ya sister too?'

'Nah. I'm about ten years older than Renee.' Her voice softened as she spoke about her sister.

'She's my half sister technically—not that we ever thought about her that way. Dad got remarried, and she was the baby of his twilight years. He died when she was about eight or nine so he never had the chance, to teach her a lot of things really.' Asha laughed softly and fondly. 'Nash tried once. Mary, my step mother, nearly had a fit. It wasn't much use though, Ren was such a sweet thing. Didn't have an aggressive bone in her body. She tried, she tried really hard, mostly because Nash wanted her to I think, but it was like asking a bunny rabbit to take on a wolf. She was useless.' Asha closed her eyes fighting the tightness in her chest as she drew in a couple of rapid breaths. 'Do you think we could talk about something else?'

'Ya find anything in ya brother's pack?'

Asha sighed. 'Not really. Nothin' personal of Nash's anyway, not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing.'

It was Daryl's turn to shrug. Asha was grateful he didn't try to give her an answer.

'Found a couple of lighters with branding on them from a hotel in Douglasville,' she said. 'It's away from the river, but I reckon it's worth a look. Can probably get there and back in a day if I take one of the cars...and can find enough gas.'

It was thin, she knew it, and she suppressed the bitter surge in her stomach that she hadn't turned up anything more useful.

Daryl frowned. 'Rick won't let ya take one of the cars till we know where the Governor is. Might need em if we need ta make a run for it.'

She sighed. 'Yeah. Figured as much.' She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. 'Can I take your bike?'

His head jerked up. 'Hell no,' he spat.

She grimaced, but it was the answer she had been expecting.

'Can ya even ride it?' He demanded.

'Used to ride dirt bikes on my cousins' farm as a teenager. Been a while, but I reckon I'd remember most of it.'

'Dirt bikes?' He looked at her in disgust. 'Ya stay the hell away from my bike.'

'Fine.'

She went back to contemplating her hands in the dark. She would just have to wait. It would take her forever if she had to go on foot.

Daryl was watching her from the corner of his eye.

'What?'

'Thought you'd be snarling and swearing at me for keeping ya from your brother?'

She rubbed at her forehead again. 'Yeah, well... I'm tired Daryl.' She swallowed hard. 'And I'm scared. What if he's there and he's turned. I don't...' Her voice trembled. 'I don't know if I can do it again.'

He reached out, and she saw him visibly hesitate before he wrapped her dirty hand in his large calloused one. 'When it's safe to go, I'll come with you.'

Asha's shoulders shook and the ground in front of her blurred as she nodded.

Daryl squeezed her hand quickly before letting it go.

They sat in silence for a while as the darkness settled in fully around the prison, listening to the dead outside the fence, and beyond that, the sound of the woods coming alive at night.

Asha absently pressed a hand to her aching ribs.

'Ya coulda let Rick help dig,' Daryl said.

'You reckon I was too hard on him?' Now that she'd had a bit of space she was feeling increasingly awkward about the way she'd behaved after Merle's death—and Rick probably didn't deserve to have his head bitten off for trying them to help them bury Merle.

Daryl chewed his bottom lip for a moment. 'Ya gonna start cutting him some slack?'

Asha hesitated. 'I've heard all about what Rick did for the group to get you here, and I get it, I get your loyalty to him.' She tapped the side of her head with a finger. 'I get it here. I just—' she tapped her breastbone over her heart. 'I don't get it here.'

Daryl looked at her, eyes intent, listening carefully.

Asha sighed and looked along the line of graves. 'I don't think he's a bad guy—and I've got to admit he wasn't completely useless when we went into Woodbury—but he's unstable, and the call he made with Michonne?' She shook her head.

Daryl leant towards her, blue eyes intense. 'Rick needs a break, but this isn't all he is. Give him a chance, he'll show you.'

Asha looked across at Daryl, noticing how close he was. She could smell him, the mix of sweat and dirt, undercut with something that was particularly him. She breathed him in, surprised how much it comforted her.

'I hope so,' she said honestly, meeting his eyes. 'I do. But I'm not holding my breath, and until then,' she gave him a small smile. 'I'll stick to following you.'

'Pfft.' He waved her comment away with his hand, leaning away from her.

She chuckled at his obvious discomfort. 'Don't worry Dixon,' she patted his leg. 'I'll only follow you whilst you're going in the right direction.'

'Stop.'

She took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet, brushing off the loose dirt. She walked around the grave and touched the cross, saying a silent farewell to Merle. She felt Daryl's eyes on her. She turned and forced a grin for him.

'Reckon I still owe Rick an apology though,' she said. 'Might as well get it over with right?'

Daryl's face was unreadable in the dark, but he inclined his head towards her in a tiny nod.

She squeezed his shoulder as she went past him, and then she went looking for Rick.