Hey y'all! Sorry this took so long to come out. Chapter Seven is always the hardest for me. Thanks to Leyshla Gisel, Haven14 and GypsyWitchBaby for all y'alls consistent reviews. And a mega shout-out to mrsdaisybuchanan, without whom I would still be lost and staring blankly at my comp screen. Y'all should go read her story "Backwoods", especially all you Caryl fans. ;) It's freakin AWESOME.

This chapter's song is "Empty" by Ray LaMontagne. His voice is like butter, go look him up. This will be the song for the next two chapters, I do believe. So definitely go look it up.

Any and all disclaimers apply.

Oh and don't forget to review! :D

Walkers poured forth in a mid-tempo stampede, and the sounds of gunshots broke the morning stillness to a thousand separate pieces. The walker that was once Beth's mother crept forward. The blonde girl rushed forward only to be thrown back by Andrea, who quickly dispatched the geek with a pickaxe to the brain.

The gunfire slowed, then ceased entirely as a single, grungy tennis shoe eked out of the shadows, soon followed by the body it was attached to.

Carol screamed brokenly and rushed forward to the little walker, only to be caught and held back by Daryl and reduced to sobbing and keening into the dirt as the redneck attempted to calm her, futile words of comfort falling on deaf ears.

Kyra felt the blood drain from her face and the tears well up into her eyes as she realized that this little monster, this creature, could only be Sophia. She tasted the bile rising up into her throat and had to cover her mouth and swallow it back.

Shooting a walker on the side of the road was one thing.

This was completely different.

Reverently and yet somehow strangely detached, Rick stepped forward and leveled his revolver at Sophia's head.

The only sound after the final shot was the wails and sobs of Sophia's mother as Daryl patiently led her back to the RV.

Kyra sat on the porch steps and waited till Daryl had left the RV before seeking him out.

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She let the underbrush crunch beneath her feet to signal her approach and not alarm him. From where she was standing, she could see him sitting with his back against the ruins of the old chimney, a bottle of Jack in his hand. His body language betrayed his fury as he took another pull from the bottle. Kyra steeled herself and marched up to him, until they were almost toe to toe and she was standing over him.

He gave he a look of fire and brimstone but she didn't back down. Instead she folded her arms across her chest and asked:

"How you doin'?"

" 'M fine." He grunted. "Don't need your pity."

She scoffed. "You think I came here to pity you, Daryl? I came out here because I want to know how you're taking all of this." She unfolded one arm and pointed back in the direction of the barn.

Daryl shot to his feet and glared down at her. "Fine. You wanna know how I'm takin' all a this? Woman, I'll fuckin' tell you how I'm takin' all of this. I'm fuckin' pissed, is how I'm takin' all a this, because I promised Carol that I'd get her little girl back safe and I didn't! I let her down and I broke m' promise! Satisfied now?" Before she could fire back at him, he scooped up the bottle and holed up in the tent.

Kyra watched him storm away and sighed. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, taking a couple deep breaths before following him inside.

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The zipper opened slowly and Kyra slipped in without a word. Daryl refused to so much as look at her, let alone give her the satisfaction of speaking to her. He could feel her kneeling by his side; her knees were barely brushing his back. So they sat there in silence. He knew she was watching him, staring at him, he felt her eyes on him. The silence continued for he didn't know how long, until it became unbearable and his patience waned.

"What the hell do you want now?" He snapped. Maybe if he continued to be an ass she would leave him alone and he could get shitfaced in peace. He continued to glare at the opposite side of the tent from her.

"Daryl," She said quietly. His head turned at the sound of his name, the tenderness in her voice. This woman never ceased to confuse him. Then he realized what he had done and jerked his head away quickly. This action only seemed to make her more determined.

"Look at me please." She continued softly. Her voice was low, insistent. Intimate, even. Without knowing why his brain defied his warnings and he was looking into her hazel eyes. Her hands cupped his face; her hair was falling around her shoulders and her face. She stroked his cheekbone with the ball of her thumb. "I worry about you, you know."

She pressed her lips against his. Before he really knew what he was doing, he was kissing her back, all his reservations and paranoia gone, leaving him needy and suddenly horny as all hell.

He grabbed her by the arms and rolled her beneath him, kissing from her mouth to her cheek to her jaw and then sucking and nibbling at the little hollow space between her throat and her collarbone. She gasped a little and her back arched beneath him, giving him room to slide his hands up her back and fumble with the clasp of her bra, damned thing that it was.

He continued to nip her neck and shoulders, gently, until he lost it a little and bit down just a smidge too hard. She yelped like a beat dog, and his eyes were on hers again. God, he could stare at them forever.

"I ain't gonna hurt you, Kyra." He mumbled when his brain finally remembered how to speak, kissing the place where he'd bit too hard.

And then she was on top, kissing him hard and running one through his hair and the other across his chest and down to his belt buckle. "I know."

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Kyra lay on her side, watching him sleep and wishing he wasn't so hard on himself and everybody else. Mama always said, best to take men as they are 'cause you damn sure can't change 'em. Kyra smiled at the memory. She thought her mama would have liked Daryl, if she were still alive. And her daddy had always wanted her to end up with a man who could protect her if she couldn't protect herself for some god-awful reason. She figured Daryl would have done so even if her daddy hadn't asked it of him.

She sighed quietly and sat up, reaching around for her clothes and redressing as quietly as she could. Daryl was still snoring softly beside her. She watched him for a moment, then leaned over and kissed his temple lingeringly, and murmured in his ear that she'd be up in the house if he needed her for anything, anything at all.

And then she was gone.

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Even though Daryl had long since stopped caring what the hour was, he still wasn't totally sure how long he had slept for. All he knew right then was that he hadn't gotten laid like that since before the dead were walking. That woman… he grinned madly and rolled over, hoping to maybe get a little more lovin' out of her.

Thing was, she wasn't there.

He shot up and dressed quickly, barely even getting his jeans on before lumbering out of the tent and scrambling around for his crossbow. Where the fuck had she gone to? She could be anywhere, anything could happen to her. And if he remembered right, she didn't have her sword with her. He'd have noticed it when he took her jeans off of her. He made a mental note to get that girl a gun and teach her how to fire it, he didn't care how much she didn't like them, she was gonna buck up and deal with it.

He started towards the house, and then he remembered what she had said.

"I'll be up at the house, Daryl, if you need me for anything at all."

This followed by the memory of the press of lips—her lips—to his forehead, and then she was… she was gone. He could have throttled her, right then and there, for leaving him in his sleep and not having the courtesy to at least wake him so he wouldn't be in this position when he got up.

He kicked a nearby tree and cussed a blue streak, crawling back into his tent and curling up with the bottle of Jack. She shouldn't have left him like that anyways. He wasn't done with her yet and besides, it was flat out rude. It wasn't like he was a cheap two-dollar whore. Dammit. Maybe—just maybe—his brain had again fooled him. Not that he could blame himself for screwing her. She was pretty goddamn hot when she was naked. But being in love with her? Fat chance. She was just like the rest of them, come to use him once and then just leaving him for dead, pretty much. Still, though, a small and calmly rational voice in the back of his head told him otherwise. She had chores to attend to, stuff to do. Laundry and woman things, shit like that. Least she wasn't like Andrea, who was completely useless and always having to act like a hard ass tough guy even though Daryl was pretty sure that there was more than enough incriminating evidence to mark the blonde woman as female.

He drank quickly—more like gulped, really. The alcohol burned its way down his throat and settled into his stomach, a knot of amber warmth. His nerves calmed a fraction and he breathed deeply, trying to find his Zen. He crashed face first onto the sleeping bag and could have died right there.

If he hadn't have known otherwise, he would have sworn that Kyra was lying next to him, maybe even in the sleeping bag. It smelled that strongly of her sweat and her skin and sex and God only knew what else.

Daryl breathed in deeply and shuddered convulsively at the memory of her body moving against his, her lips pressed against him. He grabbed the bottle and took another pull, and then another, and another, and another, and another, and then one more for good measure. He knew he was drunk, very, very drunk, drunk almost to the point of blacking out. He could feel it coming on. And quite frankly he couldn't give less of a flying fuck who said anything about it. By God he had just gotten laid and he was gonna celebrate! Why the fuck she decided she needed to run back to the "safety" of the house he had no idea. She was damn well protected with him, which made the whole thing make even less sense to him. But he didn't care right then, and kept drinking. Maybe, he thought, he did something wrong. He'd certainly left women before, those who had been a shitty lay and a waste of his night. But he knew damn well she'd enjoyed it quite a lot. His memories served to corroborate that fact. Maybe that was all she wanted, the sex. At this Daryl threw the bottle across the tent and rolled over, drifting off into the thick, dark sleep of the very inebriated.

When he woke, his instincts told him he wasn't alone.

Sorry to all you fluff fans out here but this was the end of major-fluffdom for the next couple chaps, cause it gets more serious from here. I'll update by next week, I promise.