GUYS! Guys. Guys... I almost lost chapter 14... I was panicking so hard, because, seriously, I am trying really hard to word that chapter correctly without leaving the feeling of it being rushed. I have been working on the wording for at least 2 days and still only made a page but if I had really lost it, I would have rage quited this whole thing. I mean, so much thought process just gone. Poof. never to be seen. I know it isnt amazing regardless but still, the idea of losing it hurt my soul for a few minutes until I found it again.

~Loner

"I mean," Arron found himself saying to Merle as he watched the bigger man and Daryl work, "cans make for a good starting point, but it's still pretty shitty for a warning system."

Arron knew he was dreaming, remembering things that already came to pass.

"Don't see you coming up with anythin'," Merle snapped at the man, standing from where he was tangling the rope in a bush.

This was before the main group came in. Before Shane had already taken down the weak detection system, long before Rick Grimes joined them, with the excuse of "the noise will draw them towards our location."

Merle wasn't wrong in his statement. Arron hadn't even thought about flesh eater detection. Mostly because Arron didn't approve of staying in this place long enough to need it. The space was too open for his liking. The only plus the clearing had going for it was the pond, and that could be fished clean in a few days. Arron knew the theory of salting meat for preservation purposes. He'd never tried putting into action; though, he wanted to.

"The city isn't lost yet," Arron was saying, "We can stock up there and continue on. Look for a better, safer area."

"The key word there was 'yet,'" Merle argued, "What happens when it is? Let me tell you…" While Arron was book knowledgeable, Merle actually understood the military. He had lived in it. "They will bomb the city," Merle practically threw the words at the other man, "I don't want to be anywhere near the city when that happens."

Merle, to Arron's discussed, was right, he remembered.

A few days later, jets were roaring over their heads. Merle didn't say anything, just looked at Arron with a vicious smirk as if to tell him "told you."

"Could have been in and out by now," Arron grunted back at the man. He had, at one point, did the math. Even with the trucks slowest speed, back to back bumpers, they could have been in and out in 2 days at max. Though, looking up and watching the jets turn into specs, Arron mused, it would have been a very close call.

"If we're seeing the jets," Merle said pointedly, "then it was already too late."

Arron relented, because he knew it was true. He just didn't want to admit it, didn't want to be stuck here.

The resounding booms from the bombing of Atlanta had kept all three of them up that night. Daryl leaning into Arron's chest as the man's arms hugged his waist in front of the fire. Merle had worn a defeated look on the other side of the flames as he stared into nothing. A part of them were scared that one of the jets would miss and a bomb land on their camp instead. It never happened, though, thankfully.

When the jets were flying back over head, back to where they came from, it was already noon the next day, and people were pulling up into their camp, invading their space.

Arron awoke slowly, a sense of nostalgia overcoming him from the memories. He was a little surprised to be opening his eyes to a ceiling and not a tent or leaves. Where was he? He pulled in a deep breath of air into his nose. It smelled of eggs and ham, maybe bacon; which, confused him more. Looking around, Arron took in the room. He was in a girly full size bed, clearly a woman's room, a night stand with a lace covered lamp next to it. A bookshelf, full of books, sat in the far corner next to a closed door. The closet door, which was stationed innocently across from the bookshelf, was opened about a foot, letting Arron glimpse the small dresser hidden inside and a few dress shirts with a feminine cut to them. There was a desk, not very big, with a laptop (he wondered if it worked still) set up, closed but still hooked up to speakers and keyboard-mouse set, sitting a few inches from the closet door. The chair to the desk was missing; probably taken to another room.

A knock sounded on the closed door. Then a second later, like the visitor wasn't expecting an answer, it opened slowly allowing Maggie to enter the room with a tray of food.

"Oh," Maggie breathed, startled, "your awake. We weren't expecting you to wake for another hour or so."

Arron yawned, all teeth, as he stretched his arms above his head. "What happened?" he asked, dropping his hands, turning to look properly at the woman.

Maggie moved further into the room, placing the tray she was carrying on the night stand. "You passed out after the blonde woman, Andrea?" She questioned, "shot at you." Maggie turned to Arron. "Gave us quite the fright. Father is demanding all fire arms be restricted, now, because of it."

"Oh." Arron's face was blank, like it had nothing to do with him. It really didn't. Within the first week Merle, Daryl and Arron had all but ditched the idea of carrying a gun when they noticed the flesh eaters converged on anything that made sounds (there was this one uninteresting story where Arron used a highly sophisticated robot dog as a decoy. He did it mostly because he was curious, but a small part of him did it out of pettiness. What? He had really wanted one back in 2006).

After a moment of silence, where Maggie just went about checking up one Arron's non-existent wounds, Arron was asking the woman, "Where is Daryl?" he had been mulling over the question for a while as he watched her change a Band-Aid for a non-important scratch (it look like it came from a branch) on his upper arm.

"Next room over," she replied in a strange tone. He wondered if the woman was thinking about the scars on his skin. It had been so long since anyone had seen them all that he had forgotten the impact they had on normal people.

"Ah."

There was another silence where he let Maggie finish wasting resources on him.

"What happened?" she asked in a sad kind of quiet, unable to resist touching, tracing really, a particularly bad scar on his shoulder.

"Life," he responded throwing a grin in the woman's direction as he reached up and grasped her hand. Arron pulled it away from his skin. It wasn't that the question bothered him. Too many had asked the same question, usually after sex, for him to really be offended by it. It was the way Maggie asked had, an undertone of pity just for him. He didn't need the pity for his scars. "A long time ago," he added, moving to get up. Arron took a moment to look for his clothes, even as Maggie moved away from him. Finding the clothes washed and folded nicely on the end of the bed, Arron moved the short sleeved button down, grabbing the long sleeved undershirt. "Thank you," he said once he threw on his long sleeved shirt, "for the after care." Arron threw the button town over his long sleeved one but left it open.. Then, he was moving towards the door, away from the prying woman.

Ah, hell, Arron thought as he checked the room to the left of the one he just walked out of, I forgot to ask how long I was out. Daryl wasn't in the room to the left.

Maybe, the right? He wondered as he turned around. Why did everyone just assume you knew your way around and give vague instructions? Well, he thought, glancing into what looked to be the master room, found Carl. The boy looked to be hooked up to an IV and was sweating bullets. Maybe he was sick?

Rick looked up from the chair he was sitting in, making eye contact with Arron. The man at the door turned away, dismissing him with an air of nonchalance.

Rick didn't spare the man another thought. Why would he? They weren't close. It was clear in Arron's attitude that the man didn't care much about him or the rest of the people in their group. Arron may be following the group, but the man showed no interest in being part of it. Rick wasn't sure how he felt about that, either.

To each their own, Rick thought, turning back to his child. He had his own worries, and, as long as Arron wasn't a threat, the other man could do what he want. Besides, Rick liked Daryl, and, clearly, Daryl and Arron came as a set. At least for now, Rick thought as he reached out for the cold compress rag sitting on Carl's forehead. He dropped the rag into the bowl on the night stand, then wringed it out. Rick folded the cloth again before gently placing it back neatly on his son's forehead. His son seemed to like Arron for some reason, he had noted once. Rick couldn't figure out why, too busy trying to keep the group together to really sit down and watch their interactions. He guessed, that would have to be enough for Rick to place a little trust into the man.

Days passed slowly for the group. Arron amused himself by locking Daryl in the room the other man was using to recover in (not that it mattered with the lock being on the inside of the room) until Daryl recovered enough to convince Mr. Greene to let him go. Then, Arron needed something else to do.

They still hadn't found Sophia and it was still weighing heavily on Coral's mind. Arron thought the old woman was already in morning for the child. She was just waiting for the girls body. Arron wasn't very religious, but he still prayed for her sometimes when he thought about it. It just seemed like the only thing he could do. Arron had never lost a child (that he knew of anyway), so he couldn't even grieve with the woman when he passed by her hunched form. Daryl sometimes sat with the lady for reasons Arron only partly understood.

Rick for his part, was over at the main pit, more often than not when he wasn't on Carl watch duty. He was always going on these days about playing nice and settling down on the property. Arron thought being here gave the other man a false sense of safety. Arron didn't understand where it came from. The farm was surrounded by field and defenseless. None others in the group understood either from what he could tell. Rick Grimes was a strange little man to Arron, and the scared man didn't hide that fact. Anytime Rick got within 3 to 4 feet of Arron, Arron would stare at the other like he just found the most intriguing puzzle.

Rick came within, at least, 3 feet of Arron daily too. Always asking Daryl, and by extension Arron, questions. Sometimes, the questions were random to them. Asking things like what they thought about the Greene's Group or someone from the main group, which Arron never bothered to answer. Daryl would answer these ones. Other times, Rick would just ask for advice on how they would handle a situation. Arron bullshitted his way through those. More often than not, he just answered with some outlandish scenarios just to laugh at Rick's face after telling it. He never answered with anything too serious. It didn't take a genius to realize Rick was trying to interrogate them.

At some point in the interrogations, Rick seemed to grow on them. It was kind of gross, to be honest. However, reluctant as Arron was to admit it, he ended up thinking Rick Grimes wasn't a bad guy by the end of it. A little naïve, yes, but the man wasn't bad.