AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

This one is long, but I felt it had to be written out all in one shot. There's more to come.

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

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Daryl wasn't feeling exactly as good as he told Hershel Greene and Alice both that he was feeling, but he was feeling well enough to get back out there. He didn't want the trail running cold and he didn't want them letting Sophia, probably wandering now without any real sense of direction of where she was, and certainly without any knowledge of where they were, get farther away and possibly into more dangerous territories.

He, Merle, and Carol had all had a bird's breakfast of granola and water, and they'd set out even just as the sun was beginning to change the hues of the night sky so that they promised morning, even if it hadn't officially come.

The light was barely bright enough, when they made it into the woods and found the house that Daryl had injured himself in, for him and Merle to find the tracks on the ground surrounding the rickety building.

"These here are ours," Merle said, pointing out one trail. "Come in here…go out there. Ain't no fresh ones."

Daryl could see that much. There weren't any fresh tracks. Not even the ones they'd left the day before looked fresh anymore. Sophia hadn't been back to this house. Still, even though he knew it was useless and wasting a few moments of time, Daryl walked up the porch of the house and called Sophia's name through it.

No one responded, of course, so he turned and came back down the porch steps.

"What does that mean, exactly?" Carol asked, squinting her eyes at both of them, though there wasn't enough light to force her into the expression.

"Just means she ain't backtracking," Daryl said. "When she's done with a place, she moves on. She ain't lookin' back."

"Means we gotta keep movin' 'cause she's keepin' way better time than we is," Merle responded. And he apparently took his words to be the final ones on the case because he turned and did just what he suggested.

"How do we even know we're going in the right direction?" Carol asked, looking around her as she walked. "If there aren't any tracks, how do we know she went this way?"

"We don't," Daryl admitted honestly.

"So we just picked a direction at random?" Carol asked. "There's no more method than there was back at the highway?"

"Go this way because we been every other damn direction," Merle answered from just ahead. "She ain't backtrackin', means she ain't headed no way we done covered an' come up dry on."

Daryl grunted his agreement with Merle's assessment of their strategy. It was true, at least to some degree, that they had a reason for choosing their directions. It was also true, given Carol's observations, that part of it was just the dumb luck of hoping that they happened to think like Sophia one of these days and trip right over her path.

They covered a good deal of ground, found no tracks anywhere, but when they reached the next abandoned cabin, this one in much better shape than the last, they found something along the lines of the evidence that had lead Daryl to fall through the staircase in the last house.

In a wastebasket in the living room of that house, they found a can of beans that had been eaten and a metal spoon rested on the table near the wastebasket. The food on the spoon was crusty, but parts of the food that were left around the outside of the can hadn't even fully dried yet.

Furthermore, the couch was made up to resemble something of a bed.

Someone had dined there and slept there, and they'd done it recently.

Daryl and Merle had gone into the house, afraid that they might encounter more Walkers within than they were finding in the somewhat serene surroundings of the woods, and they'd left Carol waiting by the door. Daryl's heart raced wildly in his chest, though, at the very moment that he realized they were so close behind Sophia that might she have only recently woken from her slumber and finished off the can of beans that had likely been her dinner and breakfast.

"Carol!" He called. "Come here, you might wanna see this."

Carol came into the room a few minutes later, the knife she was holding in her hand in case she was to see any Walkers still clutched there, and looked at him with an expression that was a mixture of excitement and panic.

"What?" She asked. "What is it?"

Daryl laughed.

"Not too damn much," he said. "But it's evidence that Sophia's been here…an' that she ain't been gone too damn long."

The look that came over Carol's face was the same look as before, but now intensified a great deal. She covered her mouth with her hand and walked toward the makeshift bed on the couch that Daryl was almost proud enough of to crow over. She touched the blankets and Daryl noticed tears sliding down her cheeks.

The cold blankets were the closest she'd been to her daughter for days now.

"We gotta move," Merle said, his voice sounding odd itself. He cleared his throat somewhat violently and left them both, stepping down the porch steps and starting off in what he figured they now knew was the right direction.

"I don't understand, though," Carol said when Daryl came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder to pull her after him. She didn't want to leave the evidence of Sophia passing what was possibly a peaceful night, and Daryl understood why.

"What?" He asked, pushing her gently toward the door.

She stepped out onto the porch and looked around before she spoke.

"The tracks," she said.

"Yeah?" Daryl asked.

Carol looked confused and shook her head at him.

"Well…you said there aren't any," Carol said. "Merle said there aren't any. We've been looking for tracks all morning and we haven't found a single one."

Daryl chewed his lip.

"Yeah," he ventured.

"So if we started at the same place Sophia started," Carol said, "and we just found proof she's been here, where are the tracks?"

Daryl considered a moment, grunting at the thought. He'd thought of it…clearly he'd noticed the absence of tracks in their continued search for something that didn't seem to exist…but he hadn't really thought about it. It had simply been something that he'd been taking for granted.

"Merle!" Daryl called as he dropped down off the steps, Carol on his heels. "Merle…where the fuck are the tracks? Kid can't fly."

Merle was wandering around, almost looking like a chicken scratching for food, his face near the ground. He had been outside before they got out there, and he too seemed to be pondering the same thing.

"Coulda fooled me," Merle muttered in response to Daryl's questioning. "But…I might have me an idea or two."

"Care to share that shit with the rest a' us? Or you keepin' it for yaself?" Daryl asked.

"Come here an' look for yaself, brother," Merle said, pointing at the ground.

Daryl and Carol both closed the expanse. When he got there, though, Daryl wasn't looking at much that he hadn't seen before. All he could see was what they'd seen the whole time, the smooth dirt of the forest floor.

"Yeah? So? You got some kinda X-ray vision? 'Cause I don't see shit," Daryl commented.

"I don't see anything either," Carol responded.

Merle looked at them and hummed before he laughed to himself and scratched at his chin.

"I reckon that's the point," he said.

"What the fuck you talkin' 'bout?" Daryl asked.

Merle looked around a moment, not bothering to answer him and then he laughed.

"Wouldn'ta noticed it myself if it weren't by the sheer damn accident of it," Merle mused. He laughed again. "Fuckin' shit…look around'ja, Daryl. What the hell you see?"

Daryl did look around. But he didn't see anything. This cabin, much like the other structure they'd found, was secluded. They'd likely been built a good while ago, probably long before towns nearby had even begun to be dreamt of, and they'd probably lived in by old timers that had considered them homesteads or abandoned when one of those old timers died and no one wanted to bother to keep the place up or even return to it for the shabby items that had once belonged to whoever owned them.

Places like this, practically haunted houses, spotted the rural countryside and were fire hazards and wildlife havens as much as they were homes for anyone. As a result, there was very little around them besides their natural surroundings of trees, kudzu, and Virginia creepers gone out of control.

"Don't see nothin'," Daryl said. "Trees and shit."

"Trees…trees an' shit…" Merle growled out. "Grounds clean, it's too damn clean. Look over here, 'round them leaves, 'round the base a' that tree…what'cha see?"

Daryl looked at it. The ground there was considerably more disturbed than it had been in the area between the house and the tree. It was disturbed and…

Daryl stopped. He leaned closer to the ground, closer to where Merle was pointing. Just at the edge of the leaves that had fallen and rotted, piling up near the base of the tree, he could make some thin lines in the dirt…thin lines that weren't tracks, at least not tracks of anything found in nature.

It was the very edge of the shoe tracks they'd followed early on in this hunt. The track had most likely come from the heel of Sophia's shoe. And it was right at the base of the tree and right beside a broken branch.

Reading his mind, obviously, Merle picked up the branch and studied it. He held it out to Daryl and then to Carol like he was going to teach a class on the wobbly little sorry branch.

"Green," he said, sucking his teeth. "This branch ain't broke…was torn off, twisted…see there? Come from that puny ass lil' tree over there…an' I bet'cha we had the damn time an' give a damn ta move these here fuckin' leaves? They's more a' them shoe prints ta be found."

"Those are Sophia's shoes?" Carol asked.

"Hope so," Merle responded quickly. "They what the hell we been followin'."

Daryl laughed to himself then because, as he was piecing it together, it was just too damn funny not to laugh at. There weren't any tracks because Sophia wasn't leaving any tracks.

"Sophia a monkey or somethin'?" Daryl asked, directing his question to a bewildered Carol that looked even more confused. He laughed again. "She's keepin' to the trees," he said, pointing up. "Travelin' above us, above them. Comes down when she has to, I reckon. That'd explain why the hell we keep findin' patches. Sweeps her tracks clean when she can."

"Why?" Carol asked.

Daryl shrugged. That he didn't know for sure. He could't know that for sure. But he could imagine a reason or two why she might. She was, after all, a kid.

"She lit out bein' chased," Daryl said. "Might be scared a' bein' followed. Prob'ly heard us talkin' about them things, how they follow ya…one less way for them to follow her."

"You think Walkers can track?" Carol asked. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder simply because she looked bewildered enough that she might cry. It was too much…all of it was too much for her. He shook his head at her.

"No, I don't," he said. "But she might. She's keepin' to the trees, though. Headin' gotta be that way. I say let's get our asses movin'."

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Carol could have been convinced that they had been searching for Sophia for days. She could have been convinced that they'd crossed, and perhaps re-crossed, the Georgia state line a hundred times in one day. The woods weren't her home and she wasn't as comfortable in them as the two men she walked with were.

Dixon men were in their element in the wild.

To Carol, everything was repetition and confusion. One tree looked the same as another. One stump was no different than the last. Rocks and leaves and twigs and flowers…squirrels and birds and rabbits…rinse, lather, and repeat. It was all the same.

But to the Dixons? Everything was new, everything marked something, and everything was pointing them on in a direction that she felt she'd already lost her hold on. If it hadn't been for them, she feared that she'd be lost in the woods right now. She doubted, honestly, that she had the ability to make it back to the farm on her own from here, and she wasn't even sure if they'd turned at all or had simply gone in a straight line.

But every step forward, even though her feet ached, was made easier by the tactile memory on her fingertips of the blankets. She'd touched the same blankets that her baby had slept in. She could almost imagine them warm from her body.

And it felt like a tether tied around her heart was pulling her forward, following Daryl and Merle even if they didn't know where they were going, to keep her moving in the direction that would eventually deliver her daughter back to her arms, as surely as she'd received her the day she was born and placed there, angry and red and shaking from her frustrations over arriving into the world.

Yet, even though she'd imagined the moment so many times in the past few days that she could barely keep track of all the different scenarios she'd constructed, nothing had prepared her for the actuality of it.

Nothing had prepared any of them for it.

But Daryl was the first to stop his steps, so suddenly that Carol had to almost roll her body entirely to turn instead of crashing directly into him, and let out a shrill whistle, loud enough to call nearly any Walker in the area.

But he wasn't thinking about Walkers, and as soon as she and Merle, both questioning what had come over Daryl, followed his line of sight, Walkers were the last thing on her mind as well.

Carol ran forward, toward the tree that was closest to the ambling figure above them, scared that she might not even make it there before her heart exploded into a million pieces. She was crying, by the time she got there, so hard that she couldn't even get out the name that she was trying so desperately to choke out.

All she could do was cry and try to imagine how she might scramble up the tree, but she wasn't as adept, it would seem, at climbing as her daughter was.

Sophia stopped her forward scrambling, as well.

"Mama?" Sophia asked, like she wasn't sure what was happening either.

Carol choked on her words and simply managed to hold her arms up, toward the girl, her knees giving out and dropping her down to them at the base of the tree. At that moment, her entire body felt heavy. At that moment, she realized how tired she was and how little food and sleep she'd had in the past few days. At that moment her body seemed to feel like its job was done and she could give up.

But she couldn't. She didn't have Sophia back yet…not yet.

She was surrounded, suddenly, by Merle and Daryl. Both of them talking to her, but she couldn't hear a thing. At least not a thing that they said. Sophia crawled closer to the trunk of the tree, above Carol, and looked down at her like she didn't believe that Carol or either of the men with her were real.

"Mama?" Sophia repeated.

Carol found her voice then she nodded her head and pulled herself up, grabbing at the trunk of the tree and finding Daryl's hands on her body, pulling her to her feet.

"I'm right here, baby," she sputtered out. "Come on down…come to Mama, baby."

Sophia cried then. Whatever it was in her that made her believe that she wasn't seeing what she was actually seeing, seemed to break through in the moment and she clung to the tree and cried. She started to try to climb down, but it almost appeared that, in the moment or in her haste to get down, she'd suddenly forgotten everything she'd learned about how she got up there in the first place. Her foot slipped and she slid down the rough bark of the tree, digging in her nails apparently and tightening her legs around the trunk to stop her downward slide.

And she cried worse then, because the "last little bit" was always the longest distance between you and something you wanted.

Carol felt Daryl push her out of the way and he rushed toward the trunk of the tree, reaching up at Sophia.

"Let go," he said. "I'll catch ya."

She looked down at him and shook her head.

"No," she sputtered out.

"Sophia, I swear," Daryl said. "I'll catch ya, you ain't gonna fall."

Before anyone could say anything about the situation or about Daryl's injury, or anything else, Sophia let go of the tree she was clinging to and she did drop.

And despite the howl of pain that Daryl let out, he did catch the girl. And he put her carefully on her feet.

Carol had her arms wrapped around and was crying into the top of her head before he'd barely let the girl get her footing. Her whole body was shaking and her mind couldn't seem to stop spinning. Her heart felt even more than before like it might simply explode and she would cease to be.

But, at least if that were the case, she would die happy at this moment.

"Al's gotta lotta damn work ta do tonight," Merle commented, his voice sounding softer and more distant to Carol's ears than usual. "Let's get y'all on back now. Ain't nothin' else ta see here."