Bringing the dogs into camp goes about as well as Daryl had expected; a great goddamn mess of sweet exclamations and cooing and petting and cuddling and coddling. Those dogs probably receive, in the first moments of their introduction to camp, more physical affection, more genuine pleasure at their presence, than Daryl has in his whole fuck-up life. It's a depressing, pathetic thought, with an uncomfortable amount of self-awareness.

Daryl is not a huge fucking fan of self-awareness, actually.

But there is something to be said for being on the outside looking in, and that is that the group dynamics are an open book. Rick, despite the CDC mess, can do no wrong in most eyes –he has his woman hovering close and touching every so often, reassuring herself, his boy clutching him with one hand, despite the puppies being an option, open adoration writ clear on both of their faces. Rick is not quite the marauding bastard who ought to succeed in a world like this, nor is he the paragon of shining virtue and leadership that some people want, but he is a compelling man. He manages to be competent enough to be a force to be reckoned with, and also an honest-to-God good man. He is a big damned hero, if only of the flawed and imperfect and human type.

Shane is away, disapproving again, standoffish and angry. The hell with him.

Glenn is near the centre of the vortex of soft-headed joy, but not swallowed up. Part and party to the happiness (cause of most of it), but not swept away by it. Kneeling gingerly, one arm wrapped around his hurt side, but sneaky enough that no one notices. Glenn is a little bit heroic himself, but sneaky with it, where Rick is all out on display, all the time.

Yeah, that fits him about right. Sneaky heroics. Good in quiet ways, doing things that people don't notice until they stop happening. Too kind, too soft, too much of an idealist to have made it this long at all, but for the backbone, which must be pure steel for the strength of it when he finally uses it (not near often enough for Daryl's comfort).

Daryl picks at the sleeve of his jacket thoughtfully. Small things, quiet things.

His girl, his little fuzzy hellhound, chooses that moment to extract herself from her adoring masses and bound on over. She doesn't quite manage to stop all of her feet in on go, and tumbles to a skidding halt, sprawling in front of his boot. He nudges her very, very gently. "Good girl," voice as gruff as he can manage. She manages to get all four feet under her at once, stands up to give him a long, inscrutable look. He stares back, until she rolls onto her back and squirms, baring her belly invitingly.

He's got a twitch in his cheek. He ain't smiling. A goddamned twitch, that's all.

Still, he crouches down and ruffles her fur, tugs teasingly at her ears. She does not disappoint, leaping to her feet and snapping playfully at his fingers, growling as threateningly as she can manage (not very – too sweet-looking to be taken seriously).

He looks up to far too many eyes on him. Carol in particular has the strangest look on her face, soft and gentle and wistful. It is, in some ways, profoundly uncomfortable. He narrows his eyes, almost-but-not-quite glaring, "What're you gawking at?" She shakes her head and turns away, but the look stays on her face. He isn't quite sure what to do with it, instead looks around for something that he does know how to react to.

Instead he meets Glenn's eyes, on the other side of the crowd and heat shoots through his gut, unexpected enough to make him freeze, staring stunned like a deer at onrushing lights. He'd probably be stuck there indefinitely, except his girl chooses that moment to snap her mouth shut on the meat of his hand, puppy-sharp teeth shocking him out of his daze. "Fuck!" he mutters, pulling his hand back and pressing it hard into his pant leg. He does not look back towards Glenn.

Instead, as Ranger Rick calls the gooey-headed masses to order (creating rules and schedules and probably a goddamned duty roster) Daryl is darkly visiting and revisiting the moment when he realized he wouldn't be anything more than Glenn's mistake. He worries at it like a loose tooth, almost relishing the mess of anger and guilt and longing and resentment. He clenches his fists until his nails press bright, angry crescents into his palms.

A hand falls on his shoulder, sudden enough that he almost whips around and decks the culprit. It is only Dale, though, being his interfering-old-man self. "You've had a hell of a day, Daryl. Why don't you turn in?" Daryl grunts an affirmative, and turns towards the cottage, and then remembers.

"Glenn's hurt. Figured his fool ass might decide not to tell anyone, but he lost enough blood that he's gonna drop soon. You wanna be sending anyone off to bed, it's him." Dale gives him a funny look, and damn but Daryl is getting tired of those. Actually, he's just generally fucking tired. It is morning, and he hasn't slept for at least a day, and he's too damned old for that shit.


Turns out, Rick pretty much did make up a duty roster. The dogs are just slightly less high-maintenance than the kids, when all's said and done – they need to be fed just as often, and watched pretty much all the time, so they don't wander off and draw walkers. So it's fairly natural that the care of the dogs falls either to the same people that watch the kids, or the kids themselves.

With that sorted out, things pretty much return to normal, if normal is an appropriate word for the routine they have created.

Carol and Lori play housewives, though there is only one husband (and no house at all) between the two of them. Shane continues to pace and snarl and challenge, making his discomfort at being bumped from alpha male abundantly clear. Dale proselytizes and frets and clings to an obsolete morality with both hands and probably his teeth, too.

Glenn has started going out with backup. T-Dog, usually. Daryl has made sure that he is nowhere to be found, on the days that Glenn does out scavenging; there is no way in hell he is going to be out all alone with Glenn all day.

Daryl spends a lot of time in the woods.

The group eats better than they have in weeks, maybe months. But every day he has to range a little further, work a little harder. They aren't going to be able to keep living the way they are, not indefinitely.

These people are not suited to living on the move, constantly on the run. Constantly afraid. They aren't suited, and they aren't dealing. They want to go to ground, hunker down in a defensible position and wait for the storm to pass. They're getting tense, and scared, and it's making them paranoid and edgy and cruel. Daryl is more used to this way of living than any of them, and it's starting to get to him. Things need to change.

Things are going to come to a head soon, for one reason or another.


Things, once again, get worse. Daryl is beginning to suspect that it is some sort of law of the universe. Like the 'god is an asshole' version of fucking entropy.

It's just a sort of sad, quiet worse. At first.

The pups are not healthy creatures.

Unsurprising, all things considered. Daryl's girl is the best of the lot, but none of them are doing well; too small, too timid, and too tired. Sick, and getting worse. None of the group are vets; none of them know what's wrong or, more importantly, how to fix it.

This morning, Daryl wakes up to some serious wailing. He gets an ugly, sinking feeling when he sees that it is coming from Dale's RV. The dogs are there, and Carol and Sophia sleep there most nights – it makes Carol feel safer to have walls around her at night. There's nothing good can come of tears from over that way. And yet he goes on over anyways.

Two of the dogs have died in the night. Sophia is inconsolable, weeping with abandon into her mother's shoulder, and Carol is not looking much better. There is something so stark and tragic about the two little bodies, looking even smaller in death.

Daryl's insides twist like snakes, a harsh pressure running up from his guts to his throat. His head pulses between his temples, burning behind his eyes. The room spins, everything that is not those two little bodies going out of focus.

There is no reason for this to hurt him so deeply. Daryl has been through worse than this on a good day. They've barely had the things for a week. This is natural – this is frankly a merciful way to go, compared to the myriad of horrible deaths on offer. And yet his vision is swimming. His throat is so tight it aches. This should not hurt so much. Blood rushes in his ears, loud, but not loud enough to drown out the shrill, hiccuppy crying.

His own eyes burn in sympathy, and he snarls a denial. "Hell with this," and he turns, barrels out.

The room is too small, too full by half. He hears the rest of the camp rising, coming to see what the trouble is, and he cannot be around that many people. Already he feels a sick, pressing claustrophobia, a desperate urge to not be here.

He pushes past Glenn, clearly just recently roused – shirt and hair rumpled, no hat – but eyes wide and alert. Glenn is better with people, kinder. He'll know what to do about all this. Daryl wants desperately to be alone. Actually, he wants to be drunk, but he will settle for alone.

He scoops up his crossbow and is out in the woods by the time the rest of the damned fools reach the RV he is almost deep enough into the woods not to hear the wailing, as it redoubles in volume. Every muscle in his body goes tight and drawn, his throat squeezes even tighter and his stomach twists so viciously that he's afraid that he'll be sick.

He almost misses the sound of movement in the brush, even as loud and artless as it is.


This story is going to take longer than I thought. I will not abandon it until it is finished, though there may be some long waits. Short chapter, mostly as a promise that I have not forgotten this story – stay tuned, folks!