AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl and Merle kept looking even when the light faded. Everyone else could go trotting off to oversee the health of the kid that had gotten in the way of the bullet, but the two of them were going to keep looking for Sophia. She didn't need to be stuck out in the woods too much longer and it wasn't like their presence was going to do a single damn thing anyway. They both figured that if Alice couldn't handle it, really there was relatively little to be done. And everyone knew their place.

They'd left Carol and Andrea at the RV with Dale, keeping watch to keep themselves safe from passing Walkers, but now they were headed in. It was too dark to keep looking. They had relatively little new information from before, but they were both still confident that Sophia was out there…she was out there and she was alive. She was just frightened and she was, at the moment, a champ at hide and seek. They just had to figure out how the hell to be better than her.

When they got close to the RV, Merle stopped his steps and Daryl stopped to meet him, figuring that he probably wanted to go back over what they'd seen and he probably wanted to discuss what the next day would hold. And he was right.

"Sun up we hit back down near that farmhouse we seen," Merle said. "That whole chain of 'em. She'll be needin' food an' she'll be needin' shelter. Most obvious place ta start."

Daryl nodded at Merle. They'd combed through the woods surrounding the few scattered farmhouses, all of them almost fallen in enough to believe they were abandoned long before the fall of the world, but they hadn't made it inside any of them, feeling that they'd rather day be on their side before they ventured in, not knowing if they'd find Sophia or something they weren't ready to deal with at the moment.

"Sun up," Daryl repeated, more because he didn't have any other response to give in agreement with what his brother had said.

Merle cast a glance toward the RV.

"I'ma take Andrea…me an' her…spend the night in one a' the trucks. She wants a tickle an' a poke an' I ain't turnin' her out, ya know?" Merle commented.

Daryl chuckled to himself and nodded.

"You willin' ta sleep in a damn truck for that? Could sleep in the RV," Daryl said.

Merle shook his head and chuckled.

"Keep watch," he said.

Daryl hummed. They weren't going to be watching for a damn thing. Shut up inside the truck, though, doors locked, and they really wouldn't have to watch for much. Merle wasn't unaccustomed to spending nights like that.

Without furthering the conversation anymore, Daryl went to the RV and opened the door. He didn't go in immediately. He called for Andrea and, within a matter of moments, she came out with a bundle under her arm. The plan to sleep in the truck, it appeared, wasn't something she had no idea about.

Daryl stood by the RV a moment, watched as the light bounced that Merle was carrying to lead them to the truck, and then he considered what his next move was. He hadn't noticed, honestly, that Dale was on top of the RV when they came up, but his thoughts were interrupted when he heard the old man clear his throat and say something, even if he couldn't make out the words.

So Daryl took the welcomed moment of escape from figuring out what to say to Carol, and climbled up the back of the RV to join Dale on the roof.

"Shouldn't you be asleep, old timer?" Daryl commented, coming up on the flat surface.

"Keeping watch," Dale said. "Andrea and Carol seemed to be doing fine in the RV."

"Can't even see shit up here," Daryl commented.

"Wasn't really the point," Dale said. "But I guess that you knew that."

Daryl hummed at him. He understood exactly what Dale was saying. In a lot of ways it was what Merle had been saying earlier and it was what he'd thought with coming up the ladder. Sometimes there were things that you did, not because they were practical or even very useful, but because you didn't know what else to do and it gave you something to feel like you weren't entirely useless in a given situation.

"Carol an' Andrea? They do alright?" Daryl asked.

Dale was quiet for a moment.

"Andrea's doing fine," Dale said. He made an odd sort of noise. "I worry about her…I never had kids. If I had, though, I like to think I'd have had a daughter like her."

Daryl chuckled.

"Guess you could have worse kids," he commented. He really couldn't imagine having someone like the blonde as a kid, but then again he couldn't imagine being old enough to have a kid that was full grown.

"Your brother," Dale said after a moment. "Is he…OK?"

Daryl chuckled again. He understood what Dale was asking, but he didn't know how to answer it exactly.

"I ain't hardly ever used that to explain my brother," Daryl commented. "But…hell…everything's different…figure Merle's different too. He, uh, he seems to have quite the shine for Andrea. Ain't never seen him like that before…if it's any consolation."

Dale laughed at that, but he nodded his head and Daryl assumed that he must have said something right or he must have said something that the man wanted to hear.

"Carol OK?" Daryl asked.

Now it was Dale's turn to be amused.

"Did you find Sophia? Because unless you've got her hidden in your pocket as a surprise…Carol's not going to be OK. She'll be fine when she's got that little girl back. Just like any mother," Dale said.

Daryl gnawed his lip. He'd figured as much. He didn't know entirely what his real motivation behind finding Sophia was. On the one hand he wanted to bring the girl back to someone who loved her, and that was important to him, but on the other he felt like he was almost entirely driven to bring her back because of Carol. It was almost impossible to say which motivation was the strongest…the only thing he knew for sure, really, was that he wanted to lay hands on Sophia as much as he figured anyone else around there did, except maybe Carol.

"We gon' find her," Daryl asserted. "Didn't find her today, but we gon' find her…tomorrow maybe."

Dale hummed at him.

"That why you up here?" Daryl asked. "Really why you up here? 'Cause Carol ain't OK?"

"She said she didn't want company," Dale said. "Andrea spent most of her time up here with me. Carol didn't want company."

Daryl sighed and flopped down with more force than he'd intended, drawing his knees almost up to his chest and wrapping his arm around them.

"Guess that means I'm keepin' watch too," he commented.

Dale hummed again.

"It's a wise man who understands that it's not necessarily something personal when a woman says she doesn't want company," Dale said. "It's a wiser man who understands when she's really saying you're not my chosen company."

"What?" Daryl asked.

"Carol doesn't want me around," Dale said. "She'll tolerate Andrea…women have a solidarity with each other that's inexplicable. But she wants your company. You should go down. Stay with her. Even if it's just to sleep."

"I don't know what to say to her," Daryl admitted.

"You'll figure it out," Dale responded. He shifted around in the lawn chair he was sitting on and reached to get the drink that was beside him. "I'll keep watch."

Daryl took that as his indication that he should go down. He hoped Dale was right. He hoped that somehow he could figure out what to say to Carol. He knew that he couldn't make it better for her, not entirely, because he didn't bring Sophia back to her…but maybe he could at least figure out how to make the night tolerable.

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Carol had never been more thankful for the easy, quiet company that someone like Daryl could offer as she was when she sat with him on the small bed in the back of the RV with his arm around her.

He couldn't take away the pain that she was feeling at the moment, and she understood that. He couldn't take it away, and no one else could either. She didn't expect that from him or from a single other soul. So he'd done all that he could do.

He'd offered her some update on what had happened with him and Merle. He'd offered her the assurance, even if it really wasn't his to offer, that they would find Sophia, and they would find her soon. She was close. He claimed he could feel it. He claimed to know it. He guaranteed, even though he had no real power to do so, that it would happen.

And even though she knew that he truly couldn't guarantee anything of the sort, she felt comforted just by his confidence in the matter and by the fact that he seemed to want to believe what he was saying as badly as she wanted it to be true.

And then he'd offered the only other thing that he had. He'd offered her his company. And he'd made no demands about how they should spend their time together.

So for what seemed like hours, Carol had simply sat beside him, leaning into his body, and he'd sat quietly, chewing on his fingertips from time to time, with one arm around her, hugging her against him.

It felt, to Carol, like the warmest place she'd ever been. It felt like the safest place she could possibly ask to be at the moment. Even if they were in a world gone made, in a rickety RV on the side of a highway, she felt as safe as she imagined anyone in this insane world was at the moment.

And that realization almost took her breath away, because she honestly couldn't remember the last time that she'd really felt safe, even before the world had come crashing down. Ed certainly hadn't offered her that safety. And if Ed were there now?

Carol shuddered to think of it and Daryl wrapped his arm a little tighter around her.

"Cold?" He asked.

Carol didn't want to admit that she was shivering from the fear that just the memory of her ex husband could bring to her. She didn't want to admit that, even dead, he still had that power over her. And she didn't want to admit that she was unable to stop her brain from going directly to the dark space where she could almost feel what his reaction would have been to the situation. He didn't really want Sophia, he never had, but he would have nearly killed her for this because it would have been a reason to kill her. He would have been sure she knew, if she'd doubted it at all, that it was all her fault and that losing Sophia was, clearly, some kind of punishment to her for being a bad person.

And since he'd died? She probably was being a bad person…she wasn't married to Daryl. She'd experience something with Alice that she had never even thought of doing before. She could, if she sat down and tried hard enough, convince herself that those things, on top of everything she'd ever even done in her life, were what led to Sophia being lost.

She could think exactly how Ed would have wanted her to think.

But nested in the crook of Daryl's arm, she found it hard to believe that. She found it impossible, almost, to believe that this was some kind of punishment to her.

It was horrible, and it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her or could ever happen to her, but it wasn't a punishment.

And if being nestled in Daryl's embrace at the moment was a sin? It was one that she was willing to answer for when the time came.

Still, not wanting to drag him into the maze of her thoughts, Carol said that she was cold. The shiver had come from that…the shiver had come from the cold in a room that wasn't cold in the slightest. It certainly hadn't come from the passing overhead of some of her demons.

"Move a second an' I'll pull the blanket up for ya," Daryl offered.

Carol did shift away from him, and she mopped at her face with her shirt, but she shook her head at his offer.

"Lay with me?" She asked.

"Dirty," he responded.

"We're all dirty," Carol said, chuckling a little at the thought. The last bath she'd had was…well she couldn't quite remember.

Daryl looked like he was considering it, but like he was unsure. She might have thought it was something about her that was making him unsure…but she couldn't feel that either…not when he'd spent so long just sitting with her. He was likely uncomfortable because, like everyone else, he just didn't know what to do around her or what to say to her. He didn't know what was "right," and he didn't realize that right now, this was right…just being there.

Carol sniffed and wiped her face again.

"Please?" She asked. "Just…lay with me?"

Daryl finally nodded and Carol undressed out of her pants to be more comfortable. She watched as Daryl stripped down too. They had no reason to be modest. They'd been intimate before. And tonight they wouldn't be, she wasn't in the mood and he didn't seem inclined to be the kind to pressure her, but she hoped that one day they would be again. There was no need to pretend that they were suddenly uncomfortable with one another's bodies.

Daryl slipped under to cover, sliding his back against the wall, and he held the blanket up so that Carol could slide in. She was surprised, as she did, at how natural it felt to fit her body against his and feel him situate himself so that they fit like puzzle pieces under the cover. And then he dropped his arm over her, asking if it was alright…which clearly it was…and she was once again wrapped in the warm and surprisingly safe embrace.

And even though she'd been sure she'd never sleep again, wrapped in his arms and lulled by his, perhaps false, promise that he'd find Sophia the following day, Carol closed her eyes and she slept soundly until the sunlight and the sound of Merle banging on the bedroom door of the RV roused them from their sleep.