AN: Here we go, another little chapter!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Their group clearly wasn't moving on that night and no one was pushing for it. The herd passing through, though, and the consequent loss of Sophia had put those that had thought there was some overreaction over the "camping" along the roadside on high alert.
Tonight, instead of falling into the more traditional position of having everyone sleeping and no one keeping watch of any kind, the group had changed their strategy. There were people posted in cars at each end of the traffic jam that they had basically cleared now to keep watch. In addition, there was someone at all times keeping watch on top of the RV in hopes of detecting the sounds of Walkers should someone fall asleep at their post or miss a migrating herd in the darkness.
And the changing of the guards was set to happen every two to three hours on Rick's order since he was the keeper of the only watch that Daryl knew about which still worked.
The only person not expected to do any sort of watch, besides Carl for his age, was Carol. She was in the RV, in the most comfortable of the sleeping locations they could give her, out of respect for all that she must be suffering as she tried to simply sit and wait for the hours to pass…always knowing that Sophia was out there somewhere…alone.
It was eating Daryl alive.
His first watch he'd spent perched up on the roof of an old rusty truck at the "front" of the traffic jam with Merle sitting on the hood. He'd almost dared his brother to say a thing to him. He wasn't in the mood for his brother's chat. He wasn't in the mood for anyone's chat.
Because, even though he wasn't sure why, he felt the ticking by of each second like the prick of someone plucking hair out of his body, one at a time, at regular intervals.
He hated to be alone. He might pretend otherwise, but he recognized, deep down, that it was something that he truly loathed. And he'd been lost and alone once in his life. No one had noticed his absence because, in the consequent absence of his brother, there simply hadn't been that many people who really gave a damn about where he was. So no one had come looking for him.
And worse than being alone was the realization that no one was looking for him. Even worse than being alone was the sinking feeling in his stomach and in his mind the very moment he realized that no one would likely every care if he returned or not.
That wasn't true for Sophia…plenty of people cared about her…but he could only imagine that the thought might cross her mind as she spent the night alone.
And for some reason he simply had to believe that she was alive to spend that night alone.
When the shift was over, Daryl had gone back to the RV where most of them were crowding in and sleeping between their shifts for the safety that they believed the large metal vehicle to offer. Merle refused to sleep in there, crammed in with the rest of them, so he'd chosen to sleep in their truck that was stopped nearby. Daryl didn't argue with him. If the group could believe that a little girl could take care of herself out there, then Merle sure as shit could.
When Daryl got settled, though, on the only spot available…a spot that was right in the middle of the hallway more or less, he couldn't sleep in the RV. His mind kept going back to Sophia and it was only made worse by the fact that Carol was clearly going out of her mind in the small room that had been assigned to her, Alice sleeping somewhere on the floor beside her at the moment.
Daryl glanced in there once or twice, wanting to offer some kind of words of comfort, but he wasn't able to think of anything to say.
Nothing worked in this situation. Saying he was "sorry" that Sophia was missing wasn't going to do anything and it was only going to make him sound like an idiot. Of course he was sorry…if he wasn't sorry he'd be the biggest dipshit on the face of the Earth.
He lie there for a few moments and tried to pretend that he was going to sleep, but he never really managed to get anywhere near it. The sounds of Carol in the other room suffering were drumming in his mind and the longer he lie there, the louder they seemed to be when they reverberated around his brain.
He got up from his spot and gathered up the items that he'd piled up in the small space by the door.
"Can't sleep," he announced to anyone who cared, though he doubted that anyone did. "I'm goin' ta look for Sophia."
He stepped out of the RV and turned the flashlight back on that he'd only recently extinguished.
"What are you doing?" Dale hissed at him from the top of the RV.
"Goin' ta look for Sophia," Daryl responded.
"In the dark?" Dale asked.
Daryl laughed.
"Unless you got a secret ta turnin' on the sun, old timer," Daryl commented.
Dale didn't respond, not that there was really anything to respond to, and Daryl started off toward the guardrail. He had no idea where to start and he had absolutely no belief that he was going to work miracles and find the girl, but he needed to be doing something at least.
He thought he was alone, too, until he heard Dale barking at Andrea who was on RV watch with him and heard her yelp back at the man that she was going too and that she'd be fine.
Daryl only slowed his steps slightly to let her catch up. They already had one person lost and alone in the woods…they didn't need to add Andrea to that list.
They walked in silence until Daryl had led them several feet into the wooded area and had picked up on what he knew to be a trail, though he couldn't be entirely certain it was the trail that Sophia and the Walkers had taken. Really, he knew they stood the chance of doing more harm than good out here, in regard to what they had to follow, but he hoped that if they stuck to an already pronounced trail while they walked, they wouldn't do too much to disrupt anything that might lead them to the girl when they could see better.
"What's going on with you and Carol?" Andrea asked after a few minutes walking.
"What's goin' on with you and my brother?" Daryl responded.
"I think you know," Andrea commented.
Daryl chuckled to himself.
"Yeah well, I thought we was just askin' dumb ass questions ta kill the time," he responded.
"Can you see anything?" Andrea asked, bumping into Daryl at least once in the darkness.
"Not a damn thing," he responded.
"Then what are we doing?" Andrea asked.
Daryl stopped walking and stood immediately in the path that he was attempting to follow with the assistance of a pretty low grade flashlight. He switched it off for a moment to save the battery and avoid risking drawing any more attention to themselves in case there were Walkers in the area. He didn't need to see Andrea to speak to her.
"You ever been alone?" Daryl asked. "I mean…really alone. Not like you in a room by yaself, but like…you feel like you in the world by yaself?"
In the pitch black of the night around them, Daryl had no idea with what expression the woman was regarding him. She might have been nodding at him, she might have been shaking her head, or she might have not been paying him any attention at all for her silence. She spoke, finally, though.
"I've felt that way," she said.
"Yeah, well," Daryl commented. "Just feelin' that way and really bein' that way? They're different. I got lost once. There weren't nobody lookin' for me. At least there's gonna be somebody lookin' for Sophia."
He switched the flashlight back on but avoided looking at Andrea's face. He directed the beam once more to the ground and followed it along. He had the sneaking suspicion that he was following, if anything, a cold trail left by Walkers that had passed some time before, but at least the act of wandering through the woods was keeping him out of the RV and was doing something to calm the guilt that was building up inside of him over the fact that he was doing nothing at all to find the lost girl.
Andrea didn't respond to him, either. She walked along in such a silence that if it hadn't been for the sound of her shoes crunching on the ground every now and again or the occasional catch of her breathing, Daryl might have thought that he lost her somewhere back along the way.
Finally, though, he saw something that perked his interest. It was, at least from what he could tell from the quick sweep of his flashlight, the remnants of a campsite. He'd assuredly caught a glimpse of a tent. He swept his beam back over it and paused for a moment.
"Do you think she might be in there?" He heard Andrea breathe out behind him.
Daryl felt a chill run through him and the bumps that followed it prickle up on his skin at the thought of it. They could have found her already. They might simply walk up on her and she'd be inside the tent, sleeping just as peacefully as she'd slept in any of the places they'd made camp. They could have her back before breakfast. She and Carol could even sleep in while they finished getting things ready to go, since both of them, without a doubt, would need the good rest that came with being at peace.
He was bringing Sophia back, right now…he was going to return her to Carol and they weren't going to have to wait for the sun to decide to come up.
But even as he felt his hopes elevating, he tried to remind himself that was the worst thing he could do right now. That would only make them crash down harder if he made the twelve foot walk to the abandoned campsite and found Walker Joe in there instead of Sophia.
"Could be," he said. "Hard ta tell."
He might have told Andrea to stay back while he checked it out, but he didn't think about it until she'd reached the tent with him. He ruffled the material of the tent and found no response.
He could hear, though, that there were undeniably Walkers somewhere around them in the blackness. He could hear their growling.
"Wait here," he said. "Get a knife out. Keep ready."
Daryl unzipped the tent and carefully pushed inside of it.
Immediately his heart sank. The tent was empty. There wasn't anything in there except the belongings of someone who was long gone. He ruffled around the sleeping bag and blankets there, halfheartedly hanging onto the hope that he would find Sophia buried under them and sleeping, but there was nothing to be found. He came out of the tent not even trying to hide his disappointment from Andrea.
She didn't say anything, but she did reach and point his flashlight, finding that the Walker noises they heard came from a Walker that was swinging from a rope. He'd tried to hang himself…he'd managed to kill himself, but he must have been bit beforehand because he was most assuredly a Walker now.
"Stupid asshole," he commented. "Look at his dumb ass. Looks like a sick fuckin' piñata swingin' around up there."
"Aren't you going to shoot him?" Andrea asked.
"What the fuck for?" Daryl asked. "He coulda shot himself."
Andrea put her hand on his arm to stop him from heading back in the direction of the highway with the heavy feeling of his defeat.
"If it were you," Andrea said, "wouldn't you want someone to put you down?"
"If it were me," Daryl responded, "I wouldn'ta hung myself in no tree."
Andrea stared at him, her face close enough to his that a good shift in weight could have sent them nose to nose.
"Please?" She asked.
"Why'd you wanna kill yourself? At the CDC? Why didn't you wanna leave with the rest of us?" Daryl asked.
She was silent a moment.
"Maybe I felt…alone…like you said before," she responded finally.
"You still wanna do it? Off yourself? 'Cause…Merle…he likes to act like he don't give a shit. But I reckon…it'd prob'ly…bother him…if you was to do it," Daryl commented.
He realized all at once, even though the words had come out of his mouth before he'd even thought about them, why it was that he was a little concerned about Merle's apparent attachment to the once suicidal blonde. Merle didn't make it too much of a habit to get attached to people, but that was mostly owing to the fact that you couldn't count on people to stick around. Daryl didn't want to see his brother get hurt because the blonde couldn't handle the facts of life as they were now and decided to stamp her own departure ticket.
Andrea swallowed loudly enough that Daryl could hear it.
"If you kill him, I'll tell you," Andrea said coolly.
"Tell me," Daryl responded. "And then I'll kill him."
"I don't want to die anymore," Andrea said. "I don't want to die anymore…because…I don't feel alone anymore."
Daryl chewed his lip and nodded slightly at her before he put the flashlight in his teeth to take his aim, lifted the crossbow, and fired so that the swinging Walker went limp.
"Thank you," Andrea said softly.
"Waste of an arrow," Daryl commented.
"You care about them," Andrea said.
"Walkers?" Daryl asked with a confused chuckle.
"Carol and Sophia," Andrea said. She wiped at her nose. "You care about them. They make you not so alone anymore. I saw your face when you came out of that tent. You…"
She broke off.
"You care about them," she added again, after a second.
Daryl bit his lip and hummed at her before he started to walk back toward the highway. He didn't respond directly to what she had said.
"Get on back," he said. "We'll find her first light. Ain't doin' nothin' in the dark but fuckin' up the trail."
But he knew that she was right…he did care about them. He cared about them both. And he cared in such a way that it scared him, though not nearly as much as the thought of being alone.