AN- I am on a roll right now, so expect to be bombarded with a lot of chapters. Like, this is the third one I've written today.

Onwards and upwards!

"Tell me something about your brother," she requested.

That one was easy. "Merle was my older brother…an' a jackass," Daryl said. "He met Rick and Glenn right at the beginning o' all this hell, and was mouthin' off, causin' issues just to cause issues. Rick handcuffed him to a roof, and th' key got dropped… Asshole sawed off his own hand and got away."

"Holy shit," Rylynn said, amazed. Daryl fondly shook his head in disbelief of Merle.

"Tell me 'bout your brother."

Rylynn took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I've never told anyone about them. I mean, my sister was with me for the first few months…" she stopped talking for a long while, still staring up at the glittering stars. Daryl watched her carefully, noticing a struggle flitting across her features. He was about to suggest a different topic when she suddenly launched herself off the railing and onto the soft grass. He immediately straightened up, preparing for her to bolt.

Instead, she turned to him and held him in a serious gaze.

"Daryl, your group isn't staying here, is it?" she asked. His eyes flew open in surprise.

"I…I don't know," he stuttered. "I…I feel like Rick has somethin' planned. Maybe for tonight, maybe tomorrow."

She looked down, nodding, taking in the information. "I think Deanna is spooked and feeling threatened by your family, and how close and loyal you all are. I don't know when she will act, or exactly what she will do. But she will do something, eventually."

Daryl also turned this information over in his head. "What should we do?" Rylynn always knew what was going on, and she always had the right reaction so far. She had to have a plan.

"We can't do anything," she said bitterly. "We are standing at the edge of a cliff, and Deanna and Rick are the ones who have to send us one way or the other. So I guess, we stay alert and we take advantage of the time we have left in safety."

Daryl ran a hand through his hair, gripping at his scalp. "Damn it!" he growled. "So what, we jus' wait around and collect weapons an' food and WAIT!?"

Rylynn rushed over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Shh, Daryl, keep your voice down, please!" she hissed, looking over through the house windows to be sure that the partygoers hadn't heard him. The festivities were continuing on as if the world wasn't about to erupt.

He aggressively shrugged her hand off of him, and she at first was hurt. But as he paced angrily around the yard, she recognized the fears and the hurt she was feeling, too. The dashed hope of trusting the wrong people with the wrong dreams. The anger of never catching a break, of feeling like the world was punishing you a hundred times over. And mostly, the frustration of having just found a home and having to lose it so quickly.

She could only amend one of those tonight. It meant opening up her heart to this man, this relative stranger who had made no promises to her.

But, she thought, if everything was going to go to shit soon…it may as well truly be everything.

"Daryl," she said again, softening her voice and holding her arm out to him again. He stopped pacing and stared at her outstretched hand as if it was some alien creature. She took a step closer, and lowered her hand to his. He was watching her intently, but made no moves to pull away. So far, so good. Slowly, almost as if not to spook him, she slid her fingers around his palm one by one. Her throat was dry and her pulse was racing, but she did every movement with the same control and fluidity as her running. He looked up from her hand around his to her eyes, afraid that breaking contact would mean breaking the moment.

"Daryl," she started again. "Come to my house. Deanna will probably start watching yours, but I don't think she'll watch mine too closely. I already have a bunch of supplies saved away. We can make it a safe house. When the moment comes to, we'll be ready."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Rylynn hadn't been kidding when she said that her house was not fake like Pete's. Daryl marveled at her planning and her capabilities as soon as he stepped in the door. The kitchen was relatively bare- one pot, one pan, and one fork. Like she had revealed, a series of survival, pocket and utility knives covered the magnetic strip meant for cooking utensils.

Instead of bar stools lining the raised kitchen counter that overlooked the living room, several backpacking packs, stuffed with supplies and topped with sleeping bags and tents, were tucked under the bar. The fireplace was covered in an assortment of firearms, and the bookshelf placed against the back wall held ammunition rounds instead of magazines and photos. The pantry was stocked with non-perishables, all kept in duffel bags for easy emergency movement. Daryl peered curiously behind another door, and found a small wardrobe hanging over an open suitcase. The clothes varied from tiny running shorts to long winter coats, all durable and in good condition. A peek behind the last door revealed a dark garage hiding a red and black Jeep Wrangler with several guns and stuffed duffels already in the trunk.

"That yer ride?" Daryl asked, eyeballing the vehicle.

"Yep!" Rylynn said, beaming. "One of the perks of getting to retrieve vehicles on foot is calling dibs on the ones you see first."

"What's upstairs?" He was almost afraid to ask.

She shrugged nonchalantly. "No clue. I never needed the space up there. See anything I'm missing for your group?"

He took another look around. "Nothin' major. Mostly just more o' everything, 'cause of how many people we got."

She nodded in agreement. "We'll have to get that as gradually as possible, to avoid suspicion. If shit goes down tomorrow, grab everything you guys can from your house and get over here. If shit takes longer to go down, I can hide a lot of stuff from my runs."

"Okay, sounds good." He paused, not knowing how to ask the question on his mind. She saw his discomfort instantly.

"Just spit it out, Angel," she chided.

"Are…are ya' gonna come with us?" he blurted out. She was taken aback. His entire group could be out in the infested world in less than 12 hours, and that was what he was worried about? It was touching, but also reminded her that she had stuck herself between a rock and a hard place.

"I…I don't know, yet." She admitted. Se shifted her weight from one foot to another, and then turned to the sliding glass door behind them and slid it open to reveal a screen-in back porch. Her mattress, true to her word, was between the glass door and the screened windows. She sat down heavily on it, feeling weighted by the decisions before her. "This isn't a home to me," she acknowledged. "But I also don't really know anyone in your group. Neither makes any sense."

She looked up at him with lost eyes, and he crossed over to the mattress and sat across from her.

"I get it," he muttered. "Ya got nothin' holdin' ya here, and ya' got nothin' to gain from being with us."

She gave him a half-smile. Here goes everything. "Well, not necessarily nothing to gain."

He simply stared at her. She rolled onto her stomach, lying across the mattress. She took off the scarf from around her neck, fiddling with it.

"Who knows," she said to the scarf. "Maybe I'll try to intervene between you all and that will be the end of it."

"No it won't," Daryl said immediately, not taking his eyes off of her. She smiled down at the fabric in her hands.

"No matter what, it's the end of the Alexandria version of this world. We'll be onto the next version, at some point. What would you do if you knew that this life you know was about to end, Daryl? Seeing as it is, and all?"

He mulled it over. "I'd prepare for the next one. Make sure that everythin' I can take care of is taken care of, an' then…get wasted," he said, recalling the last night he has spent with Beth. "Or blow something up," he added, remembering the last moments at the prison. "What would ya do?"

"Leave everything on the playing field, I guess. If I'm going to lose everything…I want to have some part in it. I want to lose fearlessly," she said with a determined tone. "But right now, I'm still afraid."

"Yer not afraid," he scoffed. "I ain't gonna believe that ya can even be afraid."

"I'm afraid of people," she whispered. "I'm afraid of the power they have, to make you feel pain, to take things from you, to make you feel special, to make you feel love…" her eyes flickered up to his. He held her gaze. "So I don't feel those things here."

"'Cause ya don't want to. Ain't no shame in that," Daryl voiced.

"Because I'm afraid to," she admitted. "You said today that I wasn't afraid of living. But you were very, very wrong, Daryl Dixon. I'm deathly afraid of having people to live for." She laid her head down on the mattress, over the scarf and next to his hand.

"And if I follow you and your group," she continued, her voice muffled, "I'm afraid that's exactly what I'll find. I know that's what I'll find. I'm afraid that I've already found it."

The power of her vulnerability and the trust she showed in him did nothing short of blow him away. Here he was, the least friendly, least transparent person she could have chosen, but she still chose him to share those feelings and thoughts with.

Trade, a different voice in his head insisted. It sounded like hers.

He slowly, hesitating, lifted the hand near her head off the mattress, and then carefully lowered to her head. He expected her to snap her head away, but instead he felt her relax under his palm. Uncertain of what to do, he gently combed his fingers through her hair. This was certainly something he had never done before, and the silkiness of her hair transfixed him. She held still, letting him tangle his fingers for several minutes before he found the courage to speak.

"Co.." he rasped, his voice catching in his throat. She lifted her head to look at him in confusion.

"What was that?" she asked. He cleared his throat and tried again.

"Come with us," he said. It was not a request, and not a demand. It was simply a statement, a fact that was now out in the world.

She cocked her head at him, a smile gracing her lips.

"Are you sure?"

He wordlessly nodded.

She took a deep inhale, and then sat up right next to him. She whispered "Thank you", and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

Daryl thought he might throw up out of nervousness, die of shock, and float away out of elation all at once. But she wasn't quite done yet. She moved so her face was directly in front of him. She was staring so intensely at him, as if she could read his mind through his blue eyes, that he lowered his gaze and fiddled absentmindedly with her fingertips, which were resting on her knee.

"Daryl," she whispered, and he looked back up at her, but did not let go of his light touch on her hand. She gave him a small, easy smile, which he felt himself reciprocate.

"My father's name was Adam," she told him. "Not very bohemian, as he would sometimes lament, but he kept it because of its ties to Adam in the Bible, who nurtured the Garden of Eden."

He kept his eyes fixed on hers, transfixed, but grazed another of her knuckles with his finger pad.

She kept going. "My mother's name was Jade, like the blue stone. She had eyes like yours." She reached up to his face with her free hand and barely touched the side of his temple, smiling at the resemblance.

"My brother's name," she said, shaking her head, "was Skye. He loved having a unique name when he was little, but when he got older he tried to get people to call him by his middle name, Trey, but it never caught on."

"My sister," she said, lowering her hand from his face to run her hands across the scarf, "was this incredible force of energy. She seemed to float whenever she walked. She just bounced off of obstacles; nothing phased her. I don't know how, but my mom must have seen those qualities when she was born, because her name was Echo."

She grinned at him. "Those are the biggest clues I can give you. My parents saw our family as a team unit, so everyone in my family matches because everyone has four letters in their names. My parents believed my siblings and I were of the same 'earth energy', so our names have to do with air and the sky."

"Ya aren't gonna just tell me?" Daryl asked, disappointed with the progress of the name but not with everything else.

She slyly shook her head. "Not yet, Angel. But I trust that you will figure it out."