She was shaking like a leaf, lips parted in a silent wail that Daryl imagined he could hear if he stared at her hard enough.

"Ya alright? Ya bit?" Daryl grunted, dropping to his knees to examine the girl when it became apparent she wouldn't be answering. She was covered in all kinds of scrapes and scratches, but none of them looked like the kind caused by fingernails. He paused his check-up when he got to her ankles and saw that the left one was swollen and bruised. "That's a bad sprain," he said to himself, worry coiling in the pit of his stomach. The girl couldn't run like that, and they had to get out of there fast. He twisted around again, making sure the didn't have any company.

"Are you okay?"

Her voice was cracked and high, and it rang through the woods with startling volume. Daryl swung around to face her again, a reprimand on the tip of his tongue. When he saw her tear-stained face, however, he tried a gentler approach.

"M'fine," he said quickly, hoping to reassure her. "We gotta be real quiet, now. Think you can walk like this? Can't hang around here long."

Her little nod was all he needed. He sprang to his feet and scooped up his crossbow, which had been dropped in his struggle with the walker. "This way," he said gruffly, gesturing back toward the highway. Sophia limped after him, sucking in a breath with every step she took. Each sound drove another spike straight through his conscience and into his soul, wounding him in the worst kind of way. They'd only gone a few yard when he stopped and turned to regard the girl. She wasn't too big, and she was even skinnier now than she had been when he'd first met her. He could probably carry her back to the highway without a problem. He'd dragged bigger bucks to further places, after all.

He lurched toward her and paused when she startled. "Alright if I carry you?" he asked hesitantly, holding out his arms. She gave another tiny nod and stepped toward him while he adjusted the strap of his crossbow, purposefully putting off contact. It didn't matter that he'd been the one to initiate it - the idea of having anyone in his breathing space didn't sit well with him, and that translated to a crippling awkwardness that, more often than not, set his teeth gnashing and his tongue lashing out at anyone nearby.

But he wouldn't holler at Sophia. Not today, anyway. No, he'd pick her up and he'd carry her to safety, and he wouldn't say a damn thing about it. She deserved that, after all. She'd saved his life.

Daryl sucked in a breath and regarded the girl in front of him, still fiddling nervously with the strap stretched across his chest. She was waiting for him to move, blue eyes still swimming in tears. With one last sigh, Daryl ducked down and swept her feet out from under her, catching her back with his other arm and heaving her up in one quick movement, earning a startled squeak that he might've found amusing on any other day. As it was, he kept his mouth shut. Nothing about their situation invited any sort of levity, and he'd never been a fan of that crap, anyway, preferring to leave it to Merle when at all possible.

"Thanks," he said instead, keeping his eyes on the surrounding woods as he spoke. He took one experimental step forward and then another, and when he saw it wouldn't jostle her too badly, he started walking at a speed just under his normal pace. The girl remained largely silent, aside from a wet sounding sniffle every now and then. It grated at his nerves like nothing else, but she was being quiet enough not to attract walkers and he owed this girl his life, damn it.

He couldn't get over that fact. It was too strange, and if he thought his head wound was any worse than it actually was, he might've waved off the episode as fantasy. Merle always said he liked to daydream too much.

They walked for almost an hour without too much trouble, having stopped only four times for Daryl to put down a lone walker. They didn't have very far left to go when they ran into a small herd. There were only about a half-dozen walkers, from what he could see, but he still paused a good ways off, Sophia clutched tightly in his arms. Seven wasn't too much for him to handle on a normal day, but he didn't want to leave the girl undefended, even if she was a brave little thing. So he changed directions, heading parallel to the highway instead of straight toward it.

"Mister Dixon?" Sophia asked softly, this time managing to keep her wavering voice just under a whisper.

"Don't call me that," he snapped, gritting his teeth when he remembered he was being nice to her. "Please," he added, the word coming out even harsher than his initial statement. Sophia's mouth snapped shut. She didn't try to speak to him again.

Daryl looped around the little pack of walkers and emerged from the woods in the same spot he'd entered. No one sounded the alarm until he was already in the circle of their fire, settling Sophia in the nearest chair. He was largely ignored while the group checked her over, and that suited him just fine. He grabbed a bowl and a bit of the canned chili that'd been set out for dinner and escaped to eat by Merle's bike, which was just outside the ring of cars. Of course, nothing put Rick off when he wanted to talk to someone, and the man ended up standing in front of him before too long, hands on his hips and stupid hat pulled down low.

"What?" Daryl snapped. He was being nice to Sophia, not Rick.

"It was a good thing you did," he said without preamble.

"Weren't nothin'," Daryl replied, his mouth twisting into a sneer as he bit out, "Did what anyone should'a done."

Rick visibly flinched. "Alright, I deserved that," he muttered, taking off the hat and rubbing his forehead. "You're right. We should'a kept goin'."

"Yeah," he snapped, shoveling more chili into his mouth. "Ya should have."

"We're going back out again at first light. Are you coming?"

Daryl glared. Rick got the message. He must've passed it on, too, because after Rick left, no one else bothered him. He retired to the cab of his truck and pretended to sleep, knowing all the while that Carol was out there somewhere, alone and afraid. In his head he could still hear Sophia's terrified cry for her mother, and when he finally fell into a fitful rest, her screams only increased in volume.

He ended up rising long before the sun.

"Good morning," Lori said flatly, not looking up from the camp stove she was hovering over. Daryl grunted in response and stretched like a cat before shutting the truck's door behind him. "Spam and beans for breakfast," Lori continued. "Want a plate?"

Yes. "M'fine," he muttered, slinging his crossbow over his shoulder and glancing around. They were the only ones up, which suited him just fine. Lori wasn't his favorite person, but she didn't talk to him too much. "Girl okay?"

She finally looked up from the pan, eyebrows raised higher than usual in her signature startled expression. Daryl still didn't like her, but there was something very disarming about her doe-brown eyes. Most of the time, it kept him from snapping at her too badly. She got away with just a bit more than anyone besides Carol.

"Sophia is fine," she said after a moment, still regarding him with a wide-eyed stare. The barest hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips before her expressive brows drew inward. She looked back down at the pan and pushed around the burning spam. "A little shook up and missing her mother, but..."

"M'gonna find her," Daryl snapped, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"Promise?"

Daryl swung around to face the girl that'd just emerged from the tent behind him. Sophia's wet blue eyes were still rimmed with red, and much like Lori's brown ones, they kept him from speaking too harshly to her. Hers, however, were not so much disarming as they were shocking. Delicate. Bold. They made him think of those clear glass earrings his mother had loved - the ones he and Merle had accidentally broken when they knocked down her jewelry box. He remembered how the little blue orbs had hung so daintily from her ears, and how they'd sparkled in the sun and cast dynamic blue shadows on her white throat.

Except instead of just being pretty, Sophia's eyes were also full of a fierce and mysterious something that his mother's earrings had certainly lacked.

"Do you promise?" Sophia pressed, stepping closer to him. Daryl flinched away from her and immediately felt foolish for being scared of a little girl.

"Said I would, wouldn't?" he snapped, looking down and pretending to adjust his knife to hide the sudden redness he felt rising on his cheeks.

"Please? Please promise?" she begged, moving closer still. Her voice was gaining that manic edge from the night before, rising higher and higher with every syllable. The girl was gonna start wailing again if he didn't do something about it. "Please Mister Dixon? Please say you promise?"

"Yes! Christ, girl, I promise. I'll find your ma," he growled, stalking away from them and heading toward the woods. He couldn't tell if that roiling in his belly was hunger, anger, or guilt.

"Wait!" Sophia cried, catching up and trailing at his heels. "I'm coming with you!"

"The hell you are!" he snapped, turning on his heel and baring his teeth at the little girl. "S'dangerous out there! Just look what happened last night!"

He immediately regretted his words, remembering again that he'd be dead without her. She seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because her silent stare spoke volumes.

"Christ!" he said again, letting loose a string of swears that had been building up since she'd first spoken. "Go and ask the sheriff. He says you can come, you're in."

She raised her chin, her blue eyes flashing with fear, sadness, and that something else that he just couldn't put his finger on. "I'm coming with," she said again, her words coming out in a sob that shouldn't have sounded so strong but did. "I am. She's my mother."

He couldn't believe it. That was all it took to sway him? Just three words, spoken by a teary twelve-year-old? No, he was't gonna let that slide. The kid was gonna march right back to Lori, who was watching the proceedings with worried eyes. She'd back him up. The woman wouldn't want a kid out in the woods, and she sure as hell wouldn't want the girl exposed to his verbal abuse all day without reprieve. He wouldn't let this girl walk over him like that.

"Girl's comin' with me," Daryl called, turning back to the woods so that he wouldn't see the look on Lori's face. His eyes cut to the solemn girl that now stood beside him. "You best follow directions," he hissed at her, striding toward the forest. "And quit your snifflin' before something hears ya."

If he were being honest with himself, he might admit that Sophia wasn't awful company in the woods. She was quiet as a mouse, she stuck right behind him, and she never questioned his orders. He was sure Rick and Shane wouldn't have been quite so accommodating, and even more sure Glenn would've talked his ear off by now. But they'd been scouring the woods for half the day, and Sophia hadn't made a peep.

Unfortunately for her, Daryl was in a bad mood. So he pretended she was irritating him (and in a way, she was, just by her being there) and snapped at her for noises she wasn't making. By all means, she should have been complaining. Further examination of her ankle showed that it wasn't quite as bad as it'd looked in the dark, but she'd still had less than a day of recovery, and it must've been smarting. And he knew he should be making her drink more water, but he couldn't bring himself to offer it to her even when he heard the slightly ragged edge to her breathing.

She'd asked to come along, after all. She should've known it would be tough going.

Eventually, though, he gave into his conscience and led her back toward the creek. "We're stoppin' here," he snapped, throwing his pack down on the bank and moving to splash some water on his face. Sophia sat down and pulled off her shoe so she could stick her leg in the cold water. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, guilt eating at him anew. "That hurt much?" he asked after a moment, handing her the water bottle.

"A little," she admitted. "Not as bad as yesterday."

The swelling had gone down, and in the light of day, it was clear that the bruising was from minor blunt trauma rather than the sprain. She was skinny enough that he was sure a feather could leave a mark on her if the wind blew right. Somehow, that didn't make him feel any better.

"Mister Dixon?" she asked hesitantly.

"Told ya not t'call me that," he muttered, his voice softer than it would have been if he'd had time to forget how fresh and red all those scratches looked against her pale skin.

"Sir -"

"That either," he cut it. "Daryl."

She blinked at him, and for a moment, Daryl was sure she'd lost her courage. He made an impatient sound under his breath and turned back toward the creek to stare moodily at the opposite bank.

"I killed that man," she said at last, drawing her knees up to her chest. "In the woods last night."

He wished he could forget. "Weren't no man," he mumbled in what he imagined was a comforting tone. "Was already dead. Didn't kill nothin'."

"I was so scared," she whispered, her nails digging into the skin of her legs. "I thought he was gonna get you. I thought I was gonna be all alone again."

He grunted, not quite sure what to say. Part of him felt like he should thank her again, or tell her she'd done a good job putting that thing down. But he didn't think she'd want to hear the latter, and he didn't want to try the first. So he stayed silent. He stayed silent but his heart went out to her, and now more than ever he wanted to find Carol, but they hadn't seen heads nor tails of her and he was starting to think they never would.

Suddenly, he could feel her eyes on him. "Is she dead?" Sophia asked softly. "You can tell me if you think so. It's okay."

"I'll find your mom," he said again, glaring into the girl's eyes with steely determination. Daryl might not have cared much for his own mother, but he knew Carol Peletier was a different breed than the woman who had raised him. He knew she loved her daughter - that she'd do anything to keep her daughter safe. She deserved for someone to do the same for her. "I'll find her. I promise. I'm not gonna let you be an orphan."

He didn't know it at the time, but those words were gonna change his life.