It's Rick that makes the comment, says the thing most everyone was thinking. "Hate to see another winter on the road."
Daryl'd been keeping busy. Staying away from the church. He set traps a ways away. He got some squirrels. He set up noise fences. Didn't really matter how long they'd be here, he just needed something to do.
He went back through the closest houses, through attics and basements, taking what looked good. Breaking useless junk because sometimes the shattering sound helped.
He made himself a lean-to outside, not far from the porch, close enough to see through the windows of the house, far enough away to have a small fire. And to watch for walkers before they even get close. He would almost welcome some walkers, a distraction.
Most of the prisonfolk, Sasha, Maggie, Rick and Glenn, had come to hover over his fire while the squirrel was cooking.
Beth is come from the porch, approaching like she's unsure of her welcome, when Rick says the bit about winter. There is a chill in the air. He wasn't doing anything without his flannels and leather. Even Beth was wrapped up in layers, and he could see her breath. It's starting to darken outside.
He's thankful he stayed busy enough to get through the day.
It's the first time he's been within six feet of Beth. He can't meet her eye. He keeps watch on the squirrel while she sets herself down next to Maggie. It is cold, and it's gonna get colder. Hunting's gonna get harder, again. People would get meaner. More desperate. He wasn't exactly over the moon about this DC trip, heading further North, with places full of even more people, when resources would be sparse and the weather would only get more vicious.
(Sometimes, he wonders if the weather is changing now that there aren't so many people in the world. Now that there were millions of cars running and heaters, coal and nuclear plants. Not that he ever liked it, but some days he misses the news. Nowadays, you didn't know what was happening ten feet away from you if the woods or fog was thick. Sometimes, he thinks about Japan, or Spain, England. What was happening out there? But those were idle thoughts, for places like the prison, all false security. On the road, there would hardly be time for those.)
Yeah, maybe the cold would slow down the walkers. Maybe. But that didn't outweigh all the other risks.
Seems like everyone else was thinkin' it, too, remembering what it was like, before they all found the prison. There's a silence, while the squirrel sizzles and he tries to blind himself in the fire. The spell is broken for the rest of them when Beth tells Rick that Carl's sleeping. Then, she pipes up, and says to Daryl, "Dinner almost done? Didn't think I'd ever look forward to squirrel."
For a moment, a long moment of struggle, he is suddenly irritated with her. Like he was before, when she wanted a drink. Or to play that juvenile drinking game. Like a damned thing weren't wrong and things hadn't gotten all fucked up, and he hadn't failed all the way around.
He knows, if he thinks reasonably, she's just trying. She's trying.
But he's too twisted up about too many things now. He'd thought it'd be different. He hadn't thought about any of these things, these particular variables. It had seemed pretty black and fuckin' white right up until that moment. He didn't think that she wouldn't want him to kill the man that took her from him. Or how things would be between them when everyone else was there, and there was at least a dozen things left unsaid between them since the night she was taken, and for fuck's sake, he's still too fucked in the head to even make eye contact with her.
By the time he's handing out pulled-apart scraps of meat, he realizes someone's asked her about where she's been all this time, what happened, and he's...
He's not ready to hear it. He's not sure if it's his mom's voice or Len's, whispering, I'll bet this bitch got you all messed up. Was it one of the little'uns? and he feels his stomach roll with the ideas of all the things a man could do to a girl. A woman.
He nudges Maggie with his elbow, then shoves his pitiful excuse for a dinner into her limp hand. When she locks confused eyes with his, he only shoots his own hard toward Beth, then back to Maggie. She'll get it.
If she doesn't, oh well, because he's pushing himself up and turning into the dark again. Back into the trees. This time, he doesn't flail through the bush, he doesn't make a racket. He just needs to be back where it's quiet, for a time, to deal with the shit swirling in his head.