The sun has burnt through the morning chill by the time everyone is awake. No one says a word, their eyes heavy and skin already slick with sweat. The day is going to be hot; the Georgian summer making one last push to drive them haywire.

Cal is propped up inside the house at the Greene's kitchen table, a glass of milk and a plate of eggs sit in front of her. It is only as Hershel peels back the duct tape to reveal the long line of stitches down her side that she looks away from the proffered meal.

"It looks good," he says, pulling out a warm cloth and dabbing at the pinked skin. He cleans it quickly, and places only a thin layer of gauze over the wound before sealing it with the barest suggestion of tape on either end. "Give it a chance to breathe today," he explains. "With the heat and duct tape – well, we don't want it festering."

She nods and lets her shirt fall down. "Thank you."

Hershel tucks a handful of antibiotics into her hand. "Rick seems to trust you."

She blinks and looks out the window towards the group of people slouched around the smoking firepit. Rick is perched beside Lori on a log, their son, Carl, tucked between them. "He seems like a decent man," she says, tossing back the capsules with a mouthful of water.

Hershel makes a sound in his throat, and follows her gaze. "I'd be careful," he murmurs. "I'd be careful how far you entrench yourself in their business. Not everyone in that group shares Rick's conscience."

He excuses himself and leaves quietly.

Cal returns to her meal, mulling over Hershel's redundant warning. In the brief time she had known the group, she had seen the tension roiling beneath. It was subtle, but all storms began in a calm. Shane was Rick's friend, but there was something about the man – a wildness that betrayed the civility Rick was hoping to bring.

She's chewing quietly on a spoonful of eggs when she hears it – the barest scuff of someone's shoe on the floorboards. She glances up, startled from her thoughts. Daryl stands at the doorway of the kitchen, an orange pill bottle cradled in one hand.

Cal meets his gaze evenly, and for a long moment they stare at one another. Daryl glances at her plate of food, the cup of orange juice.

"They treatin' you alright," he says with a nod.

The statement – it certainly isn't a question, she thinks - catches her off guard. She blinks and he's gone – the kitchen door breathing shut behind him. She sits in silence, wondering if he had been there at all.

Cal wanders out from the house after she's eaten. The group is gathered around their smoking firepit, and so she joins them, leaning against a tree near T-Dog. Daryl glances up from his own plate of scattered eggs – she meets his eye for a brief moment, and then he looks away.

The group is quiet. Their faces drawn and tired as they suffer in the heat. Forks and spoons click listlessly against plates. People sip at water, and even pour some on their faces and necks. The silence is insufferable, agonizing, and tense.

Dale is staring at Glenn.

Glenn is ringing his hat in his hands.

"Um, guys?" Their attention is hazy, as if they aren't quite sure the man begging their audience even has words in his mouth. Some lick and chew and suck on the food in their mouths, their attention idle and eyes blank – complacent. "The barn is full of walkers."

And then their complacency vanishes.

They're like deer in headlights, freezing in unison and waiting. Waiting for someone to tell them it's a joke, or for something to reiterate and hit them with the truth.

Dale blinks at them all, and then he nods, his voice lending force to the stuttered words of the younger man. "It's true," he says.

Slowly, one by one they all turn and regard the barn looming in the distance – more menacing in it's solitude now that the truth is ringing through their ears; more menacing as the silence of the morning surrounds them fully.

"How many?" Shane is barking, and Rick is suddenly there pushing him away from Dale and Glenn.

"Over a dozen."

Shane pushes past Rick and runs towards the barn – the rest of the group follows, pulsing behind him like an angry mob. Rick and Lori hang back, hissing soft words.

"If something happens, Rick..." Lori grabs at him. She's panicking. "If Hershel kicks us out-"

Her voice drowns away as she looks down at her stomach.


There were decisions going to be made; choices that would affect the group in more ways than one. A storm was coming, and it would be loud – but the new world didn't have time for noise. It ate up and spat up anything that whimpered or cried or begged.

The day holds a sour note thereafter. Everyone tries to return to normalcy, but always their eyes turn to regard the barn squatting solemnly in the distance. Even after Shane proclaims his intentions to watch the barn, the solitary figure pacing back and forth before the old building is hardly reassuring.

The quiet of camp that had originally driven Cal to her tent eventually drives her back out again. There were only so many times she could rearrange the paltry things scavenged from the Pharmacy in town. She crawls into the heat of the day. Everywhere people attempt to busy themselves, but always their eyes stray back to the barn.

Glenn and T-Dog wave at her from atop the RV. She climbs up beside them.

"Hard to believe, huh?" T-Dog lounges in one of the more comfortable lawn chairs, his bat sitting across his lap. "We've just been sitting here pickin' daisies, and there's a whole barn full of those things just waitin' to bite into us."

She makes a sound at the back of her throat. "It's not a bad idea," she murmurs.

"I know I didn't just hear you say that," T-Dog grunts.

Cal shrugs, "that was one of the things about the city. With that many walkers around, stinking up the place, you knew the only way they'd come after you was if they heard or saw you. Keep quiet, and out of their line of sight – it kept you alive."

Glenn nods, "probably why the farm hasn't had too much walker activity."

"That and the geography," Cal says, nodding towards the treeline hugging every corner of the farm. Behind the shaded trees lay innumerable cliffs, slick point bars with sucking sand, and waist high mud pits.

The three of them look out across the field, watching as Rick and Hershel move off into the trees. Their attention drifts towards the barn, where Shane moves back and forth in front of the door. The door jumps. He moves away, tense and ready.

T-Dog scoffs, "still don't make me feel any better."

Cal shrugs, "it shouldn't."

He looks out wistfully towards the open fields. "Last time we were complacent – well, there'd be a lot more people here today."

Cal nods, she understands.

The solemnity of their new lives settling heavily about them.

It seems as if they sit there forever. The sun bakes their skin, and it isn't long until Cal crawls down from the RV to fetch the dirty bandana discarded in her tent. Her skin feels raw as she spills water on the dirtied rag and tucks it around her neck. When she exits her tent, it's to find Andrea trotting towards the RV.

"I thought you and Rick were going out?" Glenn calls out as she approaches.

"Hershel needed him for something," she shrugs.

"No one is out looking for Sophia?" Cal can't hide the surprise in her voice. Andrea scowls.

"Rick should be back in half an hour. We really shouldn't be sending too many people out – not with the barn the way it is."

"They're riled up enough with just Shane over there," Glenn calls down, the concern in his voice apparent. "I'm sure we could spare a few people-"

"Rick's orders," Andrea says up to him and climbs into the RV.

Cal stands there in the dirt, looking out towards the barn. Movement catches her eye and she watches Daryl come hobbling out of the stable with a hand to his side. He makes his way towards the camp, the urgency in his step making him stumble once or twice – his fingers always dart to his side.

"What the hell does that cracker-ass think he's doing?" T-Dog glares across the field.

They watch as he draws nearer, his eyes down and lips tight. They're silent as he passes the RV and Cal with hardly a moment of recognition. He pushes into his tent and leaves them there in the quiet of the day.

In the distance they see Carol wander out from the barn, her shoulders tired and eyes down.

Cal glances up at T-Dog and Glenn, both of them staring down at her with curious expressions – and then she turns towards Daryl's tent and they both suck in a sharp breath.

The door isn't zipped up. He's sprawled on his back on his cot, arm over his eyes and crossbow bolt twirling idly in his fingers. There is a tightness to his jaw; a tension in his shoulders; a stillness about him that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Slowly he looks at her, lips tight as he chews on a piece of grass stalk.

They regard one another.

"You going out?" She asks.

His arm falls away from his face, and he stares at her openly, unable to hide the suspicion flaring in his eyes. "Why? You goin' to try and stop me?"

She stares at him.

"What's with you women?" He grouses, turning to glare out the screen window.

She glances at his injured side. "If you go out, let me come with you."

His breath catches, and when he looks to ask her what the hell is wrong with her - she's gone.


She returns to the RV to find it empty and abandoned. Even Glenn's perch is unattended – T-Dog gone with him. She slips up the ladder of the RV, and slouches into the lawn chair – and that's when she sees Dale in the distance, skirting the treeline with a black bag over one shoulder. She blinks and he's gone.

"Dale in there?"

The voice shocks her. She glances down from the shaded perch, and meets Shane's gaze evenly. There is a flaring storminess to his eyes, and a tightness to his jaw. She doesn't know the group very well, but she had known men like Shane in her life.

"Why?" She asks, her expression plain. The word slithers past her lips, and it ignites a disbelief in his careful expression.

And for a moment she sees it – fury.

He scoffs, "I don't have time for this – now, did you see Dale or not?"

Cal doesn't say a word.

Shane lets out a grunt and shoves himself into the RV. It rumbles underfoot, as if he is throwing himself around in its belly. It isn't long until the side-door is thrown open, shuddering against the side, and he's stalking around camp. She watches as he spins around, eyes wild and searching as he takes in the fields and the dark woods surrounding the farm.

"Shane?" Glenn and T-Dog are moving back from the house, hands full with water bottles.

"Which way did he go?" Shane barks and moves towards them. Glenn stumbles back, his eyes wide.

"He said he'd watch-"

"Well, he ain't," Shane glances up at Cal. She's still staring down at him, expression bland and patient.

Glenn blinks up at her and then back to Shane. "He asked us to get water-"

"Perfect," Shane runs a hand over his scalp, eyes wild.

"W-why?"

"He took the damn guns, that's why," Shane snaps. He doesn't say anything else; he doesn't wait for them to respond. He turns and storms off towards the trees – towards the darkening wood, and Dale. Cal watches him go; she can't interfere. It isn't her group; these aren't her people.

Glenn and T-Dog crawl up beside her. They watch as Shane moves further and further off into the fields until he disappears into the trees. They are unmoving even as the sun seethes down at them atop the RV, and the splinters of their failing group begin to surface.

Andrea stands ready at the barn; Maggie remains vigilant at the house's porch; Lori and Carl wander sporadically between the house and their tent; Carol makes her way back to camp and settles herself at a pot of laundry.

"How'd you do it?" Glenn asks, his voice cracking and breaking with his nerves.

Cal looks at him. She leans back in the lawn chair, and tugs at the scarf hugging her neck; it had dried out at one point, and then dampened with fresh sweat.

"Do what?" Cal looks back towards the treeline.

Glenn shrugs, "get out of Atlanta."

She thinks back on it – all of it. Not just the moments with Merle, but the cop and the cruiser; the apartment closet and the wailing woman and child. She had gotten out of Atlanta without Merle, it had been by some misfortune that she had found him unconscious on the side of the road.

"Alone," she says.

"What about that guy you said you hooked up with for a few days? The one that took your pack," T-Dog pointedly glances at her side and head.

She shrugs, "some scumbag I found outside of Atlanta. If anything I helped him."

Glenn winces, "left you stranded up shit creek?"

Cal nods, "didn't even waste a bullet. Just left me there in the middle of the road."

T-Dog and Glenn go still.

"This world is harsh and cold," Cal says absently. "People do crazy things to survive."

The three of them sit there into the day thinking of a man without a hand.

None of them say his name.


It happens in the afternoon. Shane is storming across the fields alone, a black bag slung over his shoulder. She can already imagine his furrowed brow – low and dark over an inscrutable expression. Rick isn't back yet; she knows what's going to happen.

A shout rises up. People spill out of their tents and gather at the house. Beth and Maggie and Patricia are there, telling them to back down, to back down, to back down. The tension is electric. It sparks and surges through each and every one of them.

"Are you with me?" Shane's words are an invite, but they ring of more – they pulse with the certainty of action, of violence, of the here and the now.

Cal stands off from the group. She stands alone and quiet and watching. The group is divided. It splinters further as both eager and reluctant hands take up the proffered guns alike. It splinters even further when someone cries out, and everyone is looking to the barn – to Rick and Hershel and Jimmy leading two Walkers like dogs.

They run.

She stands there in the dirt and watches them. She can hear them yelling.

"I tried," a voice says behind her. She turns to find Dale moving stiffly towards her. He shakes his head. His eyes are light with a misty expression of defeat. "I tried to stop him. I tried."

"I know," she says.

The loud peppering of gunfire jolts the two of them from their quiet. They look up to see the barn doors sighing open, and the first of the walkers pouring out. Dale moves past her, jogging as quickly as he can through the grasses. She watches impassively from the lawn of the house.

These aren't her people.

She can't intervene.

She moves forward slowly. The echo of the gunshots makes her wince. It reminds her of Atlanta those first few days; gunfire echoing like rain against a window pane; days and nights filled with terror as the shots rang on and on – until they promptly stopped.

Cal eyes the green wood surrounding them, briefly imagining a pulsing wave of undead trailing out from hell at their loudness. It sends a shiver up her spine, and she jogs the last hundred metres to the group.

It is as she moves up alongside a panting Dale, and Hershel's crumbling family that the shots finally stop.

The group goes quiet. The quiet sobs of Hershel's family punctuate the soft curses of Rick, and the moans of protest from his wife. Lori clutches fervently at Carl; the boy looks around wide eyed. Nobody notices the door of the barn sighs one last time.

"Sophia?" Carol's voice is a whisper. Everyone blinks.

Cal turns and stares.

The stunned silence is enough for her to know that the small girl emerging from the barn is the one they had looking for.

"Sophia!" Carol lets out a strangled moan. She takes one step forward before Daryl grabs her and holds her back. Her breathy sobs elicit a crackling moan from the tiny, bloodied girl. Everyone is quiet. Nobody moves even as Sophia stumbles eagerly over the bodies of the dead.

A few eyes stray towards Shane. A few eyes watch and wait.

It's the here and the now and he isn't doing anything.

He simply stands amongst the paralysed firing line, and stares in horror.

And then it is Rick unclipping his Magnum at his hip.

It is Rick moving forward with a gentle sigh.

It is Rick in a Sheriff's uniform, speaking to her in the light of a dying day, and her own question ringing out: That badge hold any meaning anymore?

And his answer: it can.

It does – here and now.

It is Rick that slips his gun from its holster – and it is Rick that draws and shoots.

The silence echoes through them all.

For a long moment there is nothing, and then Beth rushes forward wailing.

Chaos erupts. People are yelling, people are crying. A walker clutches at Beth, and everyone shrieks and pulls and tugs.

Hershel yells at Shane. He tells him to leave and never come back. The group surges up and around, shouting protests or agreements.

Hershel turns and walks away. Defeat lines his shoulders.

He splinters.


The camp is quiet. They're burying the dead family of the Greene's, and burning the rest. The smell of it is brief on the wind. In the distance a black cloud billows into the sky.

She finds the pack leaning against a tree, empty and forgotten – divulged of the goods from their impromptu scavenge the day before. The plastic bag wouldn't get her far, and so she grabs it and tugs it along behind her.

"What are you doing with that?" Dale's voice is shocking in the quiet of camp. Cal blinks uncertainly at him crouched in the doorway of the RV, a bottle of water in one hand and his damp hat in the other.

"Plastic bag won't get me far," she says stiffly.

Dale lets out a breath and plops his soggy hat on his head. Water beads down his forehead. "You're leaving?"

She nods slowly, "you found the girl." She winces at her words – they sound insensitive and heavy.

"Rick offered you a place here."

"And I told him I'd see."

Dale sighs, "we'd be stronger as a group."

"Maybe," Cal shakes her head, "but I don't know how strong this group is."

He's hurt, but there is something on his face that agrees. He tries not to – he tries desperately to believe the world can hold onto its goodness. He tries to pull and tug and hold on so tightly to the last threads of humanity, but they slip between his fingers – and then away. He is morality; he is the old world; he is unrelenting in his belief that humans can be good. He tries so desperately to believe his people are good.

She doesn't have the heart to tell him that the world isn't black and white – it's not even grey at this point. It's the colour of blood; dried and crusted and flaking away.

She doesn't have the heart to tell him that his group is more likely to get him killed than keep him safe.

Cal moves into her tent, ignoring Dale's soft protest. She shoves the plastic bag of items into the pack, frowning over how little she truly has. The pack slumps, deflating.

She tugs at her damp scarf.

Dale ducks through the entrance of her tent, disbelief writ on his face. "We would be stronger with you here."

She shakes her head, "you hardly know me."

"I know enough," Dale says. "I know that you mean well. I know that you wanted to find Sophia. I know you know Shane."

She glances up sharply, "I don't know Shane."

"No," Dale agrees. "But I know you can tell what kind of person he is."

Cal stares at him. Dale stares back.

"I don't know anything about the man," she hisses.

She gets up and moves past him out the tent. He follows behind her.

"He killed someone," he says quietly. It doesn't matter – no one is around to hear him anyways. "He killed a good man to save himself."

She looks out towards the billowing cloud – an inky smear across the blue sky. A pristine day marred by the cruelty of the world they now live in.

Dale's words are meant to shock her, but they don't. Instead she remembers the suffocating apartment, the closet with its consuming darkness. She remembers the vacuum pipe in her hands, and the silence – the silence of the city had been absolute.

And then the screams of the woman and her child as they were thrown to the streets, as they were left to die. She could have helped them; she could have lowered the fire escape and let them in.

She hadn't.

She hadn't wanted to risk the walkers following them up; she hadn't wanted to risk the little food and water she did have; she hadn't wanted to risk anything.

It haunts her. She can remember the decision, how murky it had been. She hadn't wanted to die, whether it was being eaten or having nothing to eat. While she knows the bitter taste of remorse, she knows Shane most likely does not. Dale was putting too much faith in her goodness; he was hoping he had found an ally amongst the crumbling ruin of his group. He was hoping her disgust would lead to righteousness.

It doesn't.

Cal stares evenly at him. "I've done the same," she says and pushes past him.

"So that's it?" Dale calls after her. "You're just going to leave?"

"I have no reason to stay."

Cal walks towards the house. She doesn't look back, but she imagines he's standing where she left him with some helpless expression of defeat.

She enters the house in time to see Beth collapse.


Hershel is missing, and in the silence of the big house the past hours haunt them.

They stand around in the grey room, their eyes downcast or red or weeping. They look at Beth, pale and still, or out the window into the painfully bright day. They don't look at one another. Lori looks at her hands. Maggie runs her fingers across her sister's brow. Cal is staring out the window.

She had been the first to react. Reaching down to check the girl was still breathing. Maggie had been grabbing at her, but Cal had taken one step and pushed her away.

"You shake her, you might very well hurt her," she'd hissed.

Maggie had calmed down, and between the three of them they had carried the broken girl to her room. It was there that Cal set her on her side, and where she wrapped her in blankets.

"She's in shock," Maggie had said.

"I know," Cal had murmured.

"We need my father."

Cal's jaw had tightened. "I know."

Lori had left to find Hershel, but he was gone – whispered off the farm like the wind. No one had even heard him leave.

"We need to find him," Rick's voice is like a beacon. The three of them blink from their stupor and turn to him. He stands at the door, eyes on Beth – there is decision in his face. "Where would he have gone?"

Maggie blinks, her eyes red and swollen. She pushes at her forehead as if to shake the thoughts from her skull. There is something in one of her hands, a flash of silver. She lifts it – a flask. "Patton's," she murmurs. "A bar in town."

The silence that follows is thick and heavy and sucks the air out of their lungs. One by one they glance at one another; one by one they look to Cal, and remember the tidings she had born.

Rick is staring at the ground, at his shoes, at his wife, and at Cal. He opens his mouth and closes it. He sighs and breathes and sweeps from the room. Maggie trembles beside her sister. Lori leans forward into her hands. Cal stares out the window, across the fields to the burning pile of corpses.

They're crumbling to ash.

Movement catches her eye. She watches a tent unfurling in the distance, a field apart from the camp. The black motorcycle parked beside it only reaffirms what she had already guessed.

"Daryl's moved," she says.

"What?" Someone asks, but she doesn't reply.

The sound of voices startle them, and one by one they turn to regard the open door. Rick's voice drifts up to them. Both Cal and Lori stand and leave the room. Maggie doesn't move.

In the kitchen there is a storm. It rattles the house with its quiet words. Shane is shaking his head. Glenn is pleading. Rick's face is tilted to the ground and his eyes are shut.

"Shane," Rick's voice is imploring.

"We can't," Shane mutters. When Rick glances at him, Shane glowers back, "we can't and you know it."

Rick blinks, and when he replies his voice drips with intensity. "I know. But we can't just leave him out there."

Shane's eyes harden,"It would solve a lot of problems, man."

"Wait—what?" Glenn's voice rises from somewhere in panic, bewilderment, disbelief.

Rick's jaw sets, "we are not having this discussion."

He goes to turn away, but Shane is suddenly there – large and dark and stormy. "Yes we are, Rick."

Rick's eyes meet Lori and Cal in the dark of the stairwell. They stand side by side and watch him. He meets their silent scrutiny; he shoulders it readily.

"You go out there, and those men out there might just follow you back. You want them to come here, man? Find Lori? Find Carl?" Rick doesn't say anything. Shane bristles. "And for what? So we can pack our bags and get gone by morning?"

Rick turns then, his eyes calm and cool. "I am not leaving him out there."

"Those girls need their father. We need Hershel," Lori hisses from the stairs. Her voice is enough for Shane to pause. He hesitates when he meets her eye – and then he turns and leaves.

"I'm coming with you," Glenn says. Rick freezes and turns to face him.

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You're not. I'm going. You need me. You need people that know that town. We get in, we get out – they'll never know we were there."

Rick is quiet, his jaw tightening. There is truth in Glenn's words. Everyone in the room can feel it. The two men stare at one another for a long moment, and then there is the barest shift in Rick's expression – consent.

Cal emerges from the dark of the stairwell, leaving a wide eyed Lori behind. She moves to stand beside Rick, her expression ever cool. "How many others have you run into? Besides from me, and each other."

Rick's eyes harden, "had a misunderstanding with some good people – and one other man and his son. They saved me, gave me food and shelter."

"You were lucky then, Rick," her voice hushes the house into a petrified quiet.

Rick's eyes narrow as he takes her in. "What exactly are you saying?"

"Don't hesitate to shoot first."


They leave shortly thereafter. The group is quiet.

Cal wanders out from the house with pack in hand. She ignores the pleading look from Dale from his perch atop the RV, and chucks the half empty pack back into her tent. She stands in the threshold for a moment, considering the small pallet she had had made up the day before.

She turns from it, refusing to further delve into the kindness the group had shown her – even going so far as to offer her a permanent home with them. It was difficult to accept something so tempting when the very foundations of that home threatened to crumble away.

"I thought you were leaving?" T-Dog asks from the fire. Cal blinks at him. "Dale told me you were thinking about it."

She glances at the house. "Not until Hershel's back with his daughters."

"I think you should stay," T-Dog's honesty makes her pause. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. "I saw how you handled that walker on Rick – we could always use someone who knows what they're doing."

"Groups make me uncomfortable. I like being alone."

T-Dog's lips thin as he pushes around sizzling ground beef in a pan. A moment of silence stretches on, and then he turns and eyes her hard. "Even if you're going to die alone?"

She blinks, and then swallows.

"That's what I thought," he says, wiggling the spatula at her.

The two of them are silent, and then T-Dog jerks his chin towards the chair at her side. "Mind tossin' me those," he asks, indicating the orange bottle of pills on the lawn chair. She does.

"What happened?" She nods towards his bandaged arm.

T-Dog grimaces, shaking his head with a scoffing laugh. "Got a little too desperate. Cut my arm on something. Herd came up on us -" at her blank expression he explains, "a group of walkers ain't like we'd ever seen."

"They're travelin' in groups now," the new voice cuts in, and the two of them blink up at Daryl. He stands off to the side, crossbow slung across his back, empty water bottle in hand. "Migrating or somethin'."

Cal blinks, remembering the group of walkers that had loped behind them during their narrow escape from the strip mall. They had stumbled out from whatever hell they endured to amble along behind the rest. The group had been colossal; a twisted marvel only Atlanta could have spat out at them.

"You think they're savvy to something?" She asks.

Daryl fills up his water bottle from a bucket of boiled water. He glances over his shoulder and shrugs, "nah. They're dumb. They ain't got nothing but loose rocks up there."

"Was that the only group you ran into?"

"Like that? Yeah," Daryl shrugs, and then turns and leaves.

T-Dog and Cal watch him move off and away, out into the field and across to the treeline where the faint outline of a tent squats amongst the saplings.

"Look, I bet it's nothing," T-Dog mutters around the mouth of his water bottle.

"Maybe," is the only word she says.

Dale crawls down from atop the RV and makes his way towards them. Cal stiffens, and moves away from the cluster of tents. She can hear T-Dog's laugh at her retreating back, and Dale's confused voice calling after her. She ignores it and heads into the fields, eyeing the plume of smoke curling above Daryl's lonesome tent. The setting sun casts the world in a familiar blue tint; the smoke is vibrant against the dark wood behind it.

They haven't said more than a few words to each other, but her feet guide her towards his small encampment. He doesn't look up from the sapling he whittles. The twig's bare body gleams in the fire light.

She sits down on the ground with her back to the farm, her eyes drawn to the shadowed mouth of the forest not more than a hundred feet away. She would never have felt safe sleeping here, but she supposes she no longer feels safe sleeping near Shane either.

"Do you need help?"

He shakes his head.

They sit on into a long silence. He doesn't ask her to leave, but neither does he ask her to stay. She sits apart from him, her hands running through the dead grasses around her. The fire crackles low and the sun sets before either makes a sound, and even then it's the barest hiss of breath as Daryl shifts against the crumbling cairn at his back.

Cal glances up from the fire. She watches the discomfort play across his face, though he tries to hide his hiss with a mumbled curse. His fingers are tense around the sapling and knife, his jaw tight as he concentrates on discarding the pain. Cal looks away when he glances up.

"Do you need something?" She asks, familiar with the pain he must be feeling. Her own side flared with heat; irritated and tainted by sweat.

"I'm fine," Daryl grouses, fingers darting to his side. He draws in a breath before he settles back, shifting to accommodate the wound. After a moment he sighs, his eyes growing heavy with sudden reprieve.

Cal's lips thin."Maybe you should have Patricia take a look at it-"

"I said I'm fine," he snaps, glaring at her. She meets his gaze evenly. He doesn't notice her fingers coiling around the end of her knife.

Without a word she stands, brushing herself off. She turns and moves away from the glow of the fire, her steps quiet even atop the sun-scorched grasses crumbling under foot.

"Thanks."

His voice startles her. It shatters the quiet of the night, and she blinks back over her shoulder at him. He refuses to look at her, his eyes to the fire.

"For what?"

"For protecting Sophia."

She's confused for a moment.

"At the creek," he clarifies. "When you wanted to know who she was to me. She ain't my kid, but she meant somethin' to the group."

"And that's why you're out here, isn't it?" Cal asks.

"Group's broken," Daryl rasps to the flames. "I was just trying to fix it."

There is a melancholy about him – something quiet and wounded. He stares longingly into the flames as if the fire itself holds the answers; it reminds her of Merle, bewildered and frightened as he murmured quietly to himself after discovering his brother may have succumbed to the inferno.

A destroyed hope.

"There ain't nothing left," he says.