AN: Hi everyone. So this story is a multi-chapter. According to my plans, it'll be thirty chapters long, give or take a few. It's a Daryl as a single dad story (with a bit more), but quite different than any that I've done before.

Before we get started, I have to say that I know that everyone has their own idea of what is in character and not in character for their favorite characters. I say that everyone has their own idea because we all see characters from our own perspectives and, if we're going by the show, people can act any number of ways in any number of episodes with very little explanation. That being said, I'll add the disclaimer that to some, some of the characters may, for at least a little while, appear out of character. For others, they won't. I understand their actions because I've seen the whole story, but as readers, you only see them as we go along. I'll trust you to make your own decisions about reading, since you know better than anyone what you want to read and what you don't want to read.

I own nothing from the Walking Dead. The only thing I own are original characters and storylines.

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

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"OK, kiddo, it's time for a bath," Daryl said, walking into Sophia's room. He found her, just like he knew he would, lying on her bed and pouring over the comic books that she plucked every week off the grocery store shelves. Sophia could read better than any kid her age. She was ahead of everyone in her class. Daryl had heard her teachers credit it to the fact that he'd been reading to her every night since she was a newborn—the only way he'd ever found to really calm her down for sleep—but Daryl figured it was something more than that.

He didn't love to read. Not at all. But even in the short amount of time he'd known Sophia's mother, Daryl recalled that she'd mentioned a love of books. It was a love of books that she'd passed to her daughter as surely as she'd passed her those eyes and a multitude of freckles.

"Just like four more pages," Sophia insisted.

"Time for a bath," Daryl repeated. "It's already gettin' late and I ain't fightin' you to get'cha outta bed in the morning. Let's go. The books ain't goin' nowhere."

Sophia sighed, but she got up from her spot. She clomped, as heavily as her small frame would allow her, out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the bathroom. Daryl stood in place until he heard the bathroom door close and the faucet turn on.

Daryl gathered up the comic books spread on Sophia's bed and marked her place in the open book with the unicorn bookmark that was lying there. He put them on the stack of books beside her nightstand and then he straightened the covers on the bed she hadn't made that morning and turned them back for her before he found her stuffed unicorn and put it on her pillow.

Sophia was a seven year old girl nearly at the threshold of eight and, as far as Daryl knew, she was just like every other girl her age out there. She had a wide range of interests. She loved unicorns and kittens and puppies and all things pink and lavender. She loved cars and old westerns and softball. She loved make believe, but she probably knew more about the realities of the world than most girls her age.

And more than anything, she loved Daryl. The feeling, too, was entirely mutual.

When Sophia had first come into Daryl's life, his brother had urged him to get a DNA test. He had no way of knowing if she was his kid or if she was just her mother's way of taking him for a ride. That's what Merle had said, at least, but Daryl knew different.

Sophia had come to him in the same way that every child showed up on cold, dark, and rainy nights in the movies. She was a classic baby left on the doorstep. Except the night that Sophia had come into Daryl's life, it had just reached the twilight hour where the day slipped into night. There was just enough darkness to swallow up her mother and hide her from prying eyes. It hadn't been cold. It had been a balmy evening in July. There hadn't been rain for weeks. And Sophia's basket had been an expensive car seat with a visor on it that had hidden her from mosquitos and the few moments of elements she'd been exposed to while she waited on Daryl to find her.

Sophia had come to him with a full range of legal papers tucked into the carrier. Everything was there that Daryl needed to take full and legal custody of the child. Carol M. Peletier had signed away her rights to the baby's father—one Daryl N. Dixon. All he had to do was file the papers and Sophia was his. Along with the legal papers, there had also been a letter. Daryl still had it, tucked down in the back of his nightstand drawer and hidden with a wide array of other things.

The letter told him that it was the hardest letter that she'd ever written. The letter said that what she was about to do—leaving Sophia on his doorstep—was the hardest thing that she had ever done. But it was a decision that she had to make for the good of her daughter. It was the only way that she could give her daughter the life she deserved. She feared, honestly, that it was the only way that she could give her daughter any life at all.

Daryl had nearly worn the letter through in places from reading it so often and rubbing his fingers over the curling letters that her hands had set there.

Merle had urged him to get a DNA test, but Daryl didn't need it. Whether or not Sophia was biologically his child, she was his daughter. She had been since the moment he'd brought the carrier inside to figure out what in the hell she was doing out there and who might have left her at his door.

It might have been a one night stand—an accident of sorts, even—but it wasn't something that Daryl had forgotten. He might never be able to forget Carol—especially now since her eyes looked back at him so often from his daughter's face.

Daryl had never believed in love at first sight, but he believed in it now. He'd loved Carol from the moment he'd seen her. Even knowing that she couldn't be his, he'd known that it would do nothing to change his feelings for her. They were strong and sudden and entirely out of his control. His love for Sophia, too, had been just as instant. The feelings were different, of course, but they'd been no less powerful. And Daryl had been no less powerless against them.

Sophia didn't know her mother. Not physically, at least. According to Carol's letter, it wasn't safe and it never would be for Sophia to know her. She was Daryl's daughter, and that was all that mattered. She trusted him to raise her as he thought best. She trusted him to decide what it was he would tell Sophia, when she asked—because she would surely ask—about her mother.

She trusted Daryl because she couldn't care for Sophia herself, and she had to know that her daughter was with someone she trusted.

Daryl could have told his daughter anything about her mother. He could have told her that she died. He could have told her that she was a horrible woman who deserted her on a doorstep when she was two days old. He could have told her that she never loved her and that was why she left.

But that would hurt Sophia, and Daryl would never hurt Sophia.

And it wasn't true.

So Daryl told his daughter what was in his heart to tell her. He told her that her mother loved her. Her mother loved her so very much that she'd done something for her that had very nearly killed her. She'd done something that every parent knew would tear their heart out—but she'd done it from love. She'd loved Sophia more than she loved herself. That was why she'd given Sophia to Daryl to raise. That was why she'd entrusted Daryl with the very important, and almost sacred, job of making sure that Sophia had the very best life that she could possibly have.

Carol had hurt herself to make sure that her daughter wasn't hurt.

Daryl had heard some call it selfishness, but he called it the ultimate sacrifice.

Because, now that he was Sophia's father, he could only imagine the strength of will that it would take for him to make such a decision. He could only imagine the strength that it would take, knowing that Sophia would have a better life with someone else—maybe the only kind of life that she could have – to hand her over to someone else and walk away. He wasn't sure that he could do it. He wasn't sure that he wouldn't have crawled away, on his hands and knees, just to collapse in a ditch somewhere and pray for the end of his suffering.

The worn letter spoke to that pain. And though Daryl hadn't understood it when he'd been holding an unexpected two-day-old baby girl, he understood it now. He understood it more and more with each passing day and each passing year.

He hoped he'd done right by Carol in the way that he had raised Sophia so far. He hoped he continued to do right by her. He hadn't known much about raising children when she'd come to him, but he was doing his best, and he thought that Sophia had a good life. She had everything she needed, most of what she wanted, and enough love to keep her happy and honest.

Sophia was Daryl's whole world, and he was better for it.

Sophia padded into her bedroom to find Daryl sitting on the edge of her bed. Dripping still from her poor attempts to dry off and wrapped awkwardly in her towel, Sophia turned her eyes up at Daryl. They were red and she let of her towel with one hand, scrambling to hold it with the other, to scrub at them.

"I got soap in my eyes, Daddy," Sophia said.

"Did you wash it out?" Daryl asked.

Sophia nodded her head.

"Get it out good, or it still burns?" Daryl asked.

"Burns," Sophia said.

Daryl stood up and scooped his daughter up, towel and all. He carried her into the bathroom and turned the faucet on at the sink before he put her feet on the plastic stool that she used to brush her teeth and wash her hands.

"Lean in here," Daryl said, reaching for the washrag. Sophia leaned into the sink and Daryl wet the rag. He helped her wash her eyes out, continuing to flush them with the cool water until she told him that she thought they were done. Then he pulled the hand towel off its hook and dried her face before he scooped her up against him again and kissed her cheek. "Better?" He asked. She nodded at him. "You figured they weren't clean enough?" He teased, squeezing her against him gently.

She sighed.

"I didn't mean to," Sophia said. "It got outta my control again."

"That's some pretty poor behavior for some soap," Daryl said with a laugh. "I'll see if I can't have a talkin' to with it tonight."

Sophia laughed to herself.

"You do that," she said. "It needs it. That's the second time this week, you know."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"You right," Daryl said. "That's the second time this week. Might just fire that soap and see about hirin' some more that knows better'n to burn people's eyes."

As Daryl stepped over the threshold into Sophia's room, he lowered her feet to the floor and she darted off from him, her towel lost along the way, to run directly to her dresser. He picked up the towel off the floor and sat on the foot of the bed while Sophia wrestled her slightly damp body into her underwear and pajamas. Then she came and stood in front of him, offering him a comb in her outstretched hand. Daryl used the towel to mop the excess water out of her hair and then he ran the comb through it, working out the knots while she hissed at him.

"You brush your teeth?" Daryl asked.

"Sure did," Sophia said. She huffed in his direction, blowing her breath at him. He could pick up a hint of the minty aroma. Still, he laughed to himself.

"Don't blow your breath on other people, OK?" Daryl asked. "That's just a you an' me thing."

"And Andrea," Sophia pointed out.

"Your aunt an' uncle ain't people," Daryl pointed out. "Get a story. Get in."

Sophia went to her bookshelf and picked a book for Daryl to read to her. The bedtime stories were always the same ones—Sophia got from him that she was a creature of habit—and Daryl patted the bed. Sophia got under her cover and Daryl moved his body to lie down next to her. He got the book situated and Sophia rested her head on his chest while he read the story to her.

No matter how short the story was, she'd fall asleep there. She did every night. And no matter how much he had to do, Daryl would lie there longer than he had to just to feel her sleeping against him. Since she had been a tiny thing, both of them tortured by the colic that had plagued her for a while, the feeling of pressure on his chest that came from Sophia resting there had been a comfort to Daryl. Finally, though, he'd move her and he'd ease out of his spot. He'd kiss her goodnight, though she'd be long gone from the world, and he'd make sure that the unicorn night light was working properly.

He'd check the stove three times to make sure it was off—even if he hadn't used it all day. He'd check the door locks twice as many times to make sure they were secure, always pulling back on the knobs as though he one day expected the deadlocks to fail. His brother called it obsession and compulsion—Daryl called it making sure that nothing he absolutely couldn't prevent happened to the most precious thing in his life.

And then, he'd check on her one more time before he went to bed himself.

Sophia might never truly know how much her mother had loved her to do what she'd done. She might never truly know how much Daryl loved her to do all that he did. She might never know that she was the most loved little girl in all the world.

But Daryl knew.

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Disclaimer: I know that Madison Lintz's eyes are not blue (and therefore Sophia's are not), but for the purposes of this story, they are. I'm sorry if that bugs someone.