AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Aaron had been true to his word. Two days scouting, six men in their party of whom Daryl was only closely acquainted with two beyond Aaron—the other two being fairly new to Alexandria and having come in during his practical shut-in period of mourning—and nothing had happened. They'd accomplished their job of locating a few businesses in an area that they hadn't fully explored before. There wasn't much there to speak of, though, and most of what anyone might want they were bringing back in their vehicles. They were having to go farther and farther to scavenge these days, but Hilltop was making great strides toward helping them all become more self-sufficient so that they could make whatever they needed. In exchange, the Alexandrians were branching out and clearing as much as they could while recruiting new people.

New people, surprisingly enough, weren't that difficult to come by.

Nearly every run they went on, they tripped up on them. Sometimes the groups were rather large—five or six or even ten people—but most times they were small. One or two sole survivors that had somehow made it this far by leaning on each other. Some groups they could approach in a friendly manner, invite them back, and shake hands in a matter of minutes. Others ended up being too far gone with all their experiences and they would try to attack. Those, unfortunately, often ended up finding the end of their road was somewhere just outside of what might have been their salvation.

They were heading back, on the morning of their second day, with their spirits a little low because they'd found neither supplies worth mentioning nor people to help populate their ever growing communities. Daryl rode in the front car with Aaron, the windows down, as they crept along the road at no more than ten to fifteen miles per hour. Their slow crawl allowed them to look over the outlying land—land that would one day be within the walls of one of their communities—and to survey how well the clearing parties had been doing at keeping Walkers out of their surrounding areas.

They didn't talk much, because there wasn't much to say, but every now and again Aaron forced some bit of conversation to keep them from riding along in complete silence. And every now again, though it was much more rare, Daryl was the one that offered something to remind them both that they could hear things beyond the sounds of road noise.

"I wish the stupid radio worked in this thing," Daryl said.

"Hart said he could fix it," Aaron said. Daryl hummed. He hadn't even meant what he'd said. Even if the radio worked, they wouldn't use it. They liked to keep their noise down. It wasn't a sincere comment, it was just something to pass the time. He was sure, though, that Aaron knew that. His own comment, more than likely, wasn't too sincere either. "The two of you are going to get through this," Aaron said, once the silence had fallen around them again. "I know you are. You're strong enough for it."

Daryl didn't have to ask him what he was talking about. He knew. He'd also heard those words before.

"We don't doubt we're gonna get through it," Daryl said, looking out the window. Something just above the tree line looked like smoke, and he tried to focus on it to explain it away for himself—fog on an otherwise clear day? He huffed and shifted in his seat. "We're already gettin' through it. Just—so damn quiet."

"If you want to talk about it," Aaron offered, "it'll break the silence."

"Wasn't talking about in the car," Daryl said.

He'd been fascinated to watch Maison grow even before he was born. Every change in Carol, even the changes she hated, were amazing. So slowly, but so quickly at the same time, Daryl had watched everything about her changing and adapting. Her body altered itself for the little boy, but her personality did too. She softened, in all the right ways, while she'd been preparing for him and Daryl had been able to witness it all firsthand. And though he'd feared something horrible at the birth of the boy, it hadn't been anything like his nightmares had suggested it might be. There was blood and mess, and there were tears and more than a few choice words from Carol, but it was nothing out of a horror movie. And at the end of it, they'd had a surprisingly bright eyed baby boy that had happily eaten his first meal before he'd fallen asleep to rest up from the grand adventure of getting there.

And then, Daryl had watched Maison grow from the outside. Feedings and diapers and baths—and sleeping when he should've been awake and waking when he should've been asleep—became common place. Daryl and Carol both woke every time the boy cried and sometimes it was almost like a race to see who could get to his crib first to decide which need it was that he was expressing. Carol preferred when he woke them for something tangible—a diaper or a feeding—but Daryl's favorite reasons to wake in the middle of the night were when the boy seemed to want nothing more than to be held close to someone's body and reminded that he wasn't alone in this world. Daryl would walk the floors for long, quiet hours when those wakings occurred.

It was like being awakened just to be reminded that you were loved. You were important and someone needed you there for no other reason than they simply missed you.

Maison started sleeping longer. There were more hours between each cry for something. And then, one night, he'd slept the longest that he ever had. Carol had gotten up to feed him in the darkness. Daryl sat on the side of the bed and scrubbed at his eyes until she returned and slipped under the covers. Maison had eaten and he was asleep again. All was well in their world. Daryl had pulled Carol close to him and they'd gone back to sleep to snag a few precious hours before Maison sounded the alarm again.

When Daryl woke again, it was the harshest waking that he'd ever had in his life. Carol's blood curdling screams rang out through the house and Daryl wasn't entirely sure he inhaled from the time he got out of bed until he stumbled into the room to find her clutching the side of the crib and screaming for pity or mercy from anyone and any entity that might hear her. There was nothing to do and she was frozen in horror. When Daryl had pulled her away, practically having to peel her from the side of the crib, he'd found that her knees didn't seem to be working properly and that she seemed to have no ability to turn off the howling unless it was to mute it to a sobbing that shook his insides every bit as much as the screaming had.

He took care of it. He did what he had to do. And then he wrapped the boy up in a blanket and he held him like he would any night that he was getting him out of the crib to hush his crying, and he took him to Carol. At first she hadn't wanted him. He wasn't her baby. He hadn't been her baby for some time. But Daryl had sat with her, the bundle in his arms, and had spent some strange minutes reliving out loud the little boy's life as though it had lasted far longer than it truly had. It had probably taken them more than hour, just sitting together, before Daryl had gone two doors down to ask Michonne what they were supposed to do. At that moment, he simply didn't know what they were supposed to do. But, from her own horrible experiences, Michonne had known what to do.

Carol still started in the middle of the night. Daryl would wake to find her sitting on the edge of the bed like she was about to get up. Then she'd lie back down without an explanation. Daryl didn't ask, but he was sure that she heard Maison.

Daryl still heard him too. When it was quiet. Instinct told him to go and check on the boy—instinct that he still felt had let him down the night when he really should've checked on him—even if the crying was just something his mind imagined.

He could hear him now, faintly, when the silence fell over them. It never really went away entirely. He wondered if it ever would.

Daryl cleared his throat, almost physically shaking the sounds out of his mind, and shifted again. He was moments away from pointing out the strange fog that he couldn't explain away, when he heard the cracking noise. He looked at Aaron and it registered on the man's face that he heard it too.

"Gunshot?" Aaron asked.

"Unless it's the damn Fourth of July," Daryl responded when another cracking sound rang out.

Aaron started to look for where it might have come from and Daryl gestured, then, toward the strange cloud, while he slapped at Aaron's shoulder.

"Fire," Aaron said.

"Maybe it ain't friendly, either," Daryl said. "Could be shooting at animals. Hungry. Looking for something to eat. But..."

"It's probably Walkers or another group," Aaron confirmed, showing that he was on the same page as Daryl. Daryl hummed and without the need for further communication, Aaron selected a side road that would take them closer to the cloud of smoke. In the mirror, Daryl could see that the car behind them was following their lead without question.

They hit their feet as soon as Aaron admitted that he wasn't sure he knew how to get them any closer to the fire by car. Behind them, the other four men spilled out of the vehicles and hit their feet too. They moved as quickly and quietly as they could and let Daryl lead because he was usually the best at finding whatever they were searching for. It wasn't hard, this time, to find the group that they were after. There were sounds of some screaming that started to get louder and louder and the sounds, ringing out, told them all that they were headed in the right direction.

Daryl had his crossbow loaded in front of him when they finally found the small clearing where the group was making camp. If he hadn't been paying attention, he'd have fallen over the chewed up body that blocked his entrance into the space, but he saw it and stepped over it. From the screams they hadn't known whether to expect that the group was under attack by Walkers or by another group, but it only took a second to realize that it was Walkers. It was Walkers that, apparently, had caught them entirely off-guard. Out here, it was dangerous to be off your guard for even a moment. The Walkers were fewer than they used to be, thanks to their clearing parties, but they still popped up.

Quickly Daryl and his group took down the Walkers that remained. There were eight of them. Maybe there were ten. The group had done a decent job of taking some of them down—they'd gotten down a dozen, but not before the Walkers had mauled and killed a few of them.

Once the immediate threat of Walkers was under control, they walked around checking the bodies. Those that were dead but hadn't turned were put down immediately. They identified, quickly, three men that were still alive, although barely, and two women—and there was one woman who was still screaming and who had been, undoubtedly, the one to let them know where they were. Daryl went straight to that woman, flinching even as he heard the sound of the silenced pistol putting down someone who had requested that their wait to die be shortened.

Daryl went directly for the screaming woman. Her screams were too reminiscent of those that he heard from Carol, at least as his mind remembered them, and he wanted to quiet them. He tried to tell her that they were there to help. He tried to warn her that she'd call up more Walkers. He asked her to be quiet. But, in the end, she was driven by pain, fear, or trauma to simply keep screaming. Daryl looked her over as best he could while she fought against him and writhed around on the ground, but it was clear that she was bitten and too far gone to be saved. He asked her, over her screams, if she wanted him to shorten it for her, and when she couldn't respond, he made his own decision to silence the howling.

As soon as he put the woman down it was remarkably quieter. His ears were ringing, and Daryl found himself putting his hands over them to try to simply muffle the hodgepodge of sounds that remained inside his head—her screaming, the sounds of the Walkers that were now put down, the crying that seemed to always be there—and he jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Aaron waved his hands quickly at Daryl, the sign to remind them all that they were friends despite whatever might be playing out just behind someone's eyes at any given time, and Daryl swallowed. He came slowly back into himself, even if the soundtrack of his mind didn't stop.

"Where's it coming from?" Aaron asked.

Daryl furrowed his brow at the man.

"The crying?" Aaron clarified.

Daryl realized, then, with a quick glance around him that he wasn't the only one who heard the crying. This time it wasn't Maison's cries that he heard. It wasn't his own mind being cruel to him. He looked around. He tried to follow the noise and stumbled only a moment around the camp before he picked up on where it was coming from—something here, something in his immediate vicinity.

Looking up, just above his head and beyond arm's reach was a suspended bundle—a hammock of sorts. It was out of reach for him. It would be out of reach of most Walkers. Most men would walk under it without noticing its presence. Daryl quickly found the rope, tied to a branch nearby, that held the bundle suspended. He cut it, holding its end, and lowered the bundle as he walked back toward it. He caught it in his hands as his body reached it.

The bundle fell around the baby inside and over Daryl's arms. The baby was small, red-faced, and had dragon tears forming in the corners of its eyes. It was tightly swaddled so that nothing but its head was visible to Daryl. It was howling, now, from the movement of the hammock bed as much as it had been from the terrifying noises around it. Daryl hugged it close to him and shushed the baby, gaining a little quiet in between the howls that suggested it might actually calm with a little patience and coddling.

Glancing around him, there was nothing left of the camp that they'd stumbled upon besides the low burning fire, well on its way to burning out and puffing out a steady stream of smoke, and the corpses of the people and Walkers alike. The other men in their group looked to Aaron. Aaron looked to Daryl.

"Nothin' we can do for them," Daryl said. "But this guy? He's gonna make it if we get on back."