Just doing that turned out to be easier than expected. And sure, it started out as little more than a brief stay in a motel, but then it just sort of… extended itself.

First there was his medical leave, spent in a motel with a comfortable enough bed that looked halfway clean, followed by a few vacation days that his boss practically begged him to take. And then there was the divorce: days spent on the phone, fighting with Lori over his apparent lack of emotional commitment to what had once been their marriage, haggling over custody rights and visitation hours and so forth until his exhaustion outweigh the nausea sitting heavy in his stomach at the thought of her and Shane living together in their house, sleeping in their bed, co-parenting their son. Part of him was glad she'd found someone - they hadn't really been working for a long, long time - but he still couldn't move past the betrayed paralysis he'd fallen into ever since he'd found out.

Yeah, it started out as just a means of surveillance, but it eventually branched into a lot more than that. The area was… nice, in a way Rick couldn't really put into words - they'd never been his forte - but could appreciate nonetheless. Sometimes, he wondered if it were just the scenery, if a big, blue sky and plentiful green were just such a change from the relatively beige hustle and bustle of his old life that it felt relaxing in a way he'd never experienced before. Maybe it was the way the days seemed longer, muggy air and humming cicadas oddly nostalgic in a way he'd never credited them as being before. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, it was nice.

The people were, too. Once he got over the initial unfriendly hump - his awkward attempts to figure out the social work the area ran on, the wariness emanating from every breakfast, lunch, and dinner at The Cherokee Rose, the constant evaluation carried out beneath every seemingly friendly gaze (and not just from Carol, but from everyone) - it, too, was relaxing. He'd developed a routine for each day, for each grocery run, for each social interaction. He started going to the weekly dances - him! dances! - even if he never actually participated in them, just sat in the corner and listened to the live band and the stomping of feet against the shiny wooden floor.

He also, quite accidentally, found himself getting closer to the very people he'd come to observe. It honestly wasn't intentional; he'd long come to the conclusion that there was nothing to find on Ed Peletier's disappearance, even if the burning itch to find out more, more, more still lingered at the back of his mind, even if he refused to leave. Honestly, it probably started out more as a keep your enemies closer situation than anything, assuming he were right about how thoroughly Carol thought through everything beneath her quiet mien. All he knew was that, one day during his second week in town, she'd slipped a casual comment into conversation that, "Daryl's going hunting tomorrow, if you want to learn some tips. Most everyone 'round here knows their way around the woods come hunting season. Seems only right you start picking it up a bit too." He'd nodded, not quite processing, and then somehow found himself waking up at too damned early an hour to go tramp as quietly as possible (though, apparently, not quietly enough) through the woods and try (but fail) to identify the essentially-indistinguishable animal tracks that Daryl somehow picked out from beneath the clutter of disturbed soil and leaf litter.

That had become regular too, some time during the liminal space he found himself occupying. Eventually, it wasn't just one a week but twice that they'd take trips out into the noisy-but-not-oppressively, quiet-but-not-totally woods and just be. (Judging by the increase in quiet, patient yups from his preternaturally skilled companion, he was slowly getting better at the whole tracking thing, though he still needed to have the prints pointed out to him.) And then it became dinners with Carol and her daughter, feasts made up of the spoils of their little hunting trips - "You helped catch 'em. Might as well eat 'em." - and good conversation that never felt as awkward as trying to eat with Lori had been.

There was just a kind of peace to his life that he hadn't really found before. The peace of slowness that came from finally pulling himself out of the work tunnel he used to hide from the train wreck of his family life and focus on healing. The peace of making friends outside of a police station, and of finding fulfilment from something other than the empty processing of file after file, gruesome crime after gruesome crime.

It was nice.

– – –

"How'd you learn to hunt?"

Daryl looked over, eyes flickering up from the tracks he was following for long enough to let minor confusion touch the edges of his expression before darting back down to the floor. His grip on his ever-present crossbow shifted, not really tightening, per say, and not in a threat either, but in the way he always did when Rick started a conversation. "Huh?"

"I've never asked." It was true. Paradoxically, given why he had arrived there in the first place, Rick had wanted to avoid personal questions as much as possible. Partly, it was just to avoid raising suspicion about his motives (even though he knew that he'd quite definitely already been seen through, and from the very beginning, too), but it was partly - odd though it sounded - out of a distant kind of respect. He hadn't been ready to spill his personal details then, so why would he ask someone else to do so? (He didn't look too hard at the fact that his sudden willingness to ask meant that, somewhere along the way, he'd developed a willingness to answer.) "Just curious. Ain't gotta answer."

No answer was immediately forthcoming; they just kept walking, Daryl's near-soundless steps buried under the soft, ever-unavoidable crunch-crunch-crunch of Rick's own feet. Then, a minute or so later: "M' brother taught me."

It was short, to the point. A quiet thing that Rick almost didn't hear, and not nearly as informative as he might have hoped, but it was also more than he expected. "Older?"

A nod. "Yeah."

"I always wondered what it was like to have siblings." At the resulting look: "Only child."

Another nod. "Merle prolly ain't what you're thinking, but he's my brother." Daryl shrugged, fingers flexing around the crossbow again, just feeling. Steeling himself, maybe. It almost made Rick back off the questioning, but there was something - in Daryl's eyes, maybe, or in that unconscious shifting - that made him wonder if the conversation weren't good in some way. Like airing out a wound, or venting a steam valve. "He's in jail now. Got involved with some bad folks, ain't gotten out since. You've prolly known six just like him." A short laugh, harsh and yet somewhat fond at the same time. "Or, hell, maybe ya ain't. Never met no one quite like Merle b'fore."

Rick remembered the file he'd read, so many days ago, and the long, long list of charges he'd read attached to the name Merle Dixon. He'd definitely got involved with some bad folks, that couldn't be denied. "I've known a few like that."

"Easy to be mad at 'im. Used to be pissed." A shrug, half-edged with exhaustion, or maybe something a little like resignation. "Can't be anymore. Merle's gonna do what Merle's gonna do. Ain't nothin' I or anybody else c'n do about that." He let a minute pass, disturbed only by their footsteps. Crunch, crunch, crunch. "Still my big brother."

"Yeah." Rick nodded. "Makes sense."

It did.

– – –

Rick had wondered, once, whether there was something going on with Daryl and Carol. There was something unbelievably close about them, two souls that couldn't be separated because they were so thoroughly intertwined. A match set.

He'd asked, on their third or fourth trip out into the woods, once they'd gotten over the initial awkwardness of their situation and fallen into somewhat companionable half-silence, half-chatter. He hadn't even been particularly subtle about it, had straight up asked: "You and Carol a thing?"

Some distant part of him - the part used to suburbia, to cookie-cutter houses and green turf lawns, to white siding and whiter picket fences - had felt off asking it. Felt like he was being too brusque, too blunt, too invasive. But that part had also felt ill-fitting, like the remnants of a skin he was still in the process of shedding, and he'd ignored it. Daryl didn't do pretty words, didn't care about disguising purpose with delicate phrasing or mendacious politeness or anything like that; he said what he thought or he didn't say anything at all, and that was that.

Rick couldn't help but find it remarkably freeing to do the same.

And, true to form, Daryl hadn't gotten pissy because what's that supposed to mean, Rick? You never say what you mean. He'd just snorted, a genuine pfft sound that conveyed just how ridiculous he found the idea. "Nah. Ain't like that."

Rick had fished around in the depths of his memory for one of the various terms he'd picked out of the self-help books Lori had tossed at them during their trial separation. "Platonic soulmates?"

But Daryl had just shrugged. "Maybe. Ain't bothered to put it into words. Just is." He'd stopped then, suddenly, and Rick had known enough by then to shut up until the sharp whistle of the newly-loosed crossbow bolt turned into the dull thunk of it striking home. (Because it did. Every time.) He had the newly-deceased rabbit by the ears, and the bolt safely extricated, by the time he spoke again. "She's got some kinda thing goin', if that's why you're askin'. Zeke's weird, but he's alright. She likes him."

There had been a warning there, an implicit shovel talk that Daryl could have said but managed to make far more menacing by not doing so. It also hadn't been needed, though, since Rick hadn't even been able to contemplate that idea without chuckling loudly enough he'd probably screwed all to hell their chances of bagging the deer they'd been following. "No, no, nothing like that. Just curious."

He'd gotten a nod at that, utterly unsurprised. It was scary, sometimes, how well Daryl knew him, and vice versa. He tried not to dwell on it too much. Sometimes, he even succeeded.

– – –

Carol, it became abundantly clear as Rick got to know her, was brilliant. Not in the showy way, like Sherlock Holmes, or those chess champions he read about sometimes in tabloids and the like, but in a quietly insightful way that impressed him even more. There was an efficiency to everything she did, even in terms of the calculated lenience she worked into her schedule, and an intention behind everything she did. (He pushed to the back of his mind the fact that this very quality was what had made him wonder - what still sometimes made him wonder - if she hadn't killed Ed Peletier and dumped him into somewhere remote and impossible to find.)

Hers was a game of pretty words, but only when she felt like it. When she needed it. Her mask was one of gentleness, worn comfortably over sharp features until they couldn't be seen, but she didn't rely on it either. Sometimes, she was blunt too, at the moments when it caught a person most off guard. The interplay between the two - between a liar's smile and an honest evaluation - was smooth, subtle, so natural Rick couldn't always see the difference. Sometimes he could. Many times, he couldn't.

But they'd gotten to know each other, over the days and weeks and months, and he'd started to count her as a friend. Someone he cared for. (It was also hard to babysit for someone and still keep them at arms' length; one night of watching over Sophia had more or less destroyed any wariness he'd still been able to muster up.) Yeah, he was more sure than ever that Ed Peletier had not vanished of his own accord. He was also becoming more and more convinced not to do anything about it.

Rick was pretty sure Carol knew, both that he knew and that he couldn't bring himself to care. Maybe that was why she'd instigated the first hunting trip, knowing that it would spiral into the something more it had become. He wasn't sure he'd ever know, but, like many things these days, he wasn't sure he cared about that either.

– – –

Carl visited, from time to time. It was never for very long - never for as long as Rick would have wished - but it was time spent with his son and Rick would never risk jeopardising that by picking a fight with Lori. He just waited for those glorious periods, keeping the guest room prepared the way Carl liked it, and welcomed him eagerly whenever he could visit.

It was nice, Rick couldn't help but think, to see Sophia and Carl interact. They were very different children - she had never gotten particularly talkative, and he couldn't seem to be quiet for anything in the world - but they got along well, and he always grinned to see it. Sophia smiled too, which was still all too rare an occurrence, and the sound of his son laughing was loud in his usually silent home.

One boring, run-of-the-mill Tuesday morning had seen Rick sitting in the Dixon-Peletier home, sharing one of Daryl's frankly great piping-hot cups of coffee with Carol as his son and her daughter chattered about the books they were reading that day. It was glorious, and comfortable, and, for the first time, Rick realised that he'd somehow managed to stumble into a family.

– – –

And then, months after spring had officially given way to the hot, humidity of summer, he got a call. His boss's voice sounded the same as it always had, her tone brisk but friendly in a way he'd learned to parse pretty early on. "Grimes?"

He'd nodded, then remembered that phones didn't convey body language particularly well. "Yeah?"

"I thought you'd want to know." A moment, and the dread pooled in Rick's gut despite not knowing what was coming. He knew something was wrong, even if he couldn't hear anything to indicate it in her tone. Maybe it was just the word choice. Maybe it was something more. Maybe he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop and he just hadn't realised it.

He fought back the shakiness of his tone, the jitters of static he'd swear he could feel skittering up and down his fingers. "What's up?"

"Remember that case you were looking into? Ed Peletier?"

Another nod. A steady-as-he-could-make-it, "Yes?"

"They just found a body. Not much left of him, but dental's done their work enough: we're sure. You were right: he's dead." And then, just as he knew would come: "Signs of foul play, too. Knife wound to the skull."

Rick swallowed. "Shit." And then he swallowed - just the once, but convulsively - because he really hadn't meant to say that aloud. Hopefully, she'd just chalk it up to the disappointment of cop instincts proving unfortunately right. Hopefully, she wouldn't see through it to what it actually meant. "Thanks for the heads-up."

"Yeah." She paused for a second, and Rick descended well into the spirallings of what the hell do I do now musings before getting yanked out again by a slightly confused, slightly impatient, "Well?"

He blinked. "What? 'Well', what?"

"Don't waste my time, Grimes." Her voice was fond, behind the bite. (She'd been his friend at the academy - back when she was just Monica Graves, Classmate - and he'd attended her wedding; it was hard to keep distinct the lines of boss and employee when friend blurred the boundary so severely.) "Do you want the case or not?"

He didn't hesitate, though he probably should have. "Yeah," he said, pretending his voice didn't sound hoarse when he did. "Yeah, thanks, I would."

"Yup," she said. "Let me know if you need anything."

The line went dead - and hah, but that was an interesting turn of phrase, given the givens - and he let the hand holding his phone fall down to his side. "Shit."