Daryl turns his attention to settling in once the fire is blazing nicely to dispel the growing darkness.

He slips inside his tent to unroll his sleeping bag on the ride side of the shelter then arranges his things to the left.

There's precious little aside from his weapons, but a means of protection is more valuable now than cash ever had been and he's proud of the knives he'd collected.

He'll likely regret the lack of more clothing as winter bears down on them like the bitch it tended to be, but he's gone cold before. Might should have left the sleeves on more of his shirts, but the summers were so frickin' hot in this place he felt suffocated in long sleeves.

He plucks a stiletto from the collection and snaps the blade out with a practiced flick of his wrist. His fingers test the edge and tip for sharpness; finding it suitable for his purposes. With ease he presses the release to unlock the blade so that it folds back into the handle then tucks it into his pants pocket for the time being.

The crossbow he places right inside the tent flap, retiring it for the night in favor of his buck knife to handle any visitors he might get.

He stoops to rifle through his knapsack for his rope. It was a bitch to lug around at times and he often wonders why he bothered, but any time he thinks of leaving that particular supply behind something happens to prove its usefulness. It'll serve as a perimeter guard for his camp as well as a place to hang his kill after a hunt.

He moves to string it up between a pair of trees and hooks the bushy tails of the squirrels to the line. He leaves the rabbit on its chopping block then digs out the stiletto to place on the brick beside his intended dinner.

His collection of twigs and branches is lacking anything suitable for a proper spit to roast the meat on and he'll need to forage around some more to fix that.

Not all that hungry at the moment, he settles back down beside the fire to stoke the flames with a stick. He gets lost in the warming, hypnotic dance of the fire as it consumes the pile of wood he'd set alight.

Playing with fire is something he'd always been a fan of.

He shoves the stick harder into a burning ember as the sound of rushing, not quite running, footsteps reaches his ears.

"We can't find Lori," Carol announces with a brand new set of matches for him, "and the others aren't back yet either."

He blames the glow of his pretty little fire for how she had found him and jabs viciously at another burning chunk of wood.

"That dumb bitch must've gone out there looking for 'em," he's too surprised to worry about the woman.

"What?" he hears the surprise and judgment in Carol's tone; doesn't need to look to confirm her criticism.

He jabs harder at the burning embers and curls his shoulder away from the weight of her stare.

"Yeah, she asked me to go," he looks because he feels her fucking staring at him and finds her eyes disbelieving. "Told her I was done being an errand boy."

"And you didn't say anything?"

Whoops, his hands slowly stop thrusting the stick in the fire as he considers that he could have said something to someone.

Then he considers how someone could have been at the campsite to say something to him to prevent his pulling up stakes, but the coulda, woulda, shouldas of life were the bane of his existence. It's a waste of time and energy to call on an emotion like regret to weigh him down.

The breeze shifts to blow smoke into his face and he blinks away the dry burn on his eyeballs.

She's waiting for him to say something now, but he ain't got shit.

She wants him to say something now, but he's got no idea what she expects from him and he's had just about enough of getting all twisted up inside over this one.

He remains silent and focused on the fire.

When he moves to poke it again with his stick her eyes finally move away from his slouching back and he hears her sigh of disappointment.

His tongue itches to make some quip to welcome her to the real world so full of disappointments when you looked to another person for answers. He keeps the thought inside, though, knowing the scene could turn ugly quick.

Too many issues under the surface tearing to be brought out of the darkness within to spread their venom on the world that destroyed and hurt so fucking much.

She stomps away and he lets out a breath he hadn't even consciously held.

Being near her did that to him anymore; messed with his heartbeat and breathing and he needs space to get himself back under control. Get her out of his head so he doesn't care anymore if she hurts, emotionally or physically.

It was never his place to care and, clearly, it never will be. And that's all the better for him.

He doesn't need her. He doesn't want any of them weighing him down with the time came to fight for his own life.

He doesn't care.

And if he tells himself that often enough while alone at this little camp of his then maybe it will become true.

"Don't do this," Carol comes back to stand over him while he's distracted by those damned thoughts. "Please," he flinches at that word like it had ever meant a damn to ask nicely. "I've already lost my girl."

"Yeah," he jams the stick at the ground before throwing it aside to stand, "that wasn't my problem neither."

He glares on his way around her before stalking off into the woods to get the hell away from those damned eyes she had.

What the fuck does that even mean, he bristles with the want to have asked the question instead of storming off. That implication again that he's something to her; same as she had said to him in the stable. Like he's her what?

What the hell did the woman want from him? Expect of him?

He's been trying to figure it out since she kissed his injured forehead like she cared and wanted to heal him of the hurt.

Just as he's been trying to figure out what he wanted from her since the moment he'd seen that Cherokee rose, thought of her blue eyes wet with tears and cut the bloom away from the bush without a care for the thorns that had pricked his skin.

The answers don't magically come to him and he slams a fist into the trunk of a nearby tree for the gift of pain to obliterate his thoughts.

He pulls back and flexes his fingers, feeling flecks of bark in the cuts on his knuckles. The sting of torn flesh is familiar; as oddly comforting as the swelling he knows will come around the joints from the impact of his punch.

Breathing deeply he focuses on the physical twinges and turns his attention to the ground to find a branch or two suitable for making a campfire spit for his dinner. He finds a good one with a solid Y shape and settles on it along with a good, straight stick to spear the meat with.

Carol's gone when he gets back to the campfire, which is what he wants.

Her gone from his camp; his head.

His stupid heart.

He can't bring himself to think of her gone from his life because that sure as shit would happen sooner or later and he isn't about to tempt fates by thinking a thought that brings the end on sooner.

He'd tried the believing shit; the thinking that there was a chance of any other fate when Sophia went missing and all that his attempts at Zen had gotten him was a kick in the fucking teeth that he really hadn't been prepared for when the girl turned up undead.

They would all end up dead eventually in all of this, not that that was a truth exclusive to this new zombie filled world. Used to be the only things certain in life were death and taxes, all the end of the world has changed was that people weren't paying their government at the moment. Which leaves death as the only certainty they have left; the only choice they got was how bloody the end would be.

Daryl isn't about to let a single bite take him out like it had Jim or that little girl.

If the zombies wanted him then they'd have to rip him to fucking shreds just to get him to stop killing as many of their kind as he could on his way down.

He focuses on that thought; that determination that has gotten him to this point alive.

He plants the branch in the dirt beside the campfire then moves to skin and clean out the rabbit carcass. He skewers the meat on the stake and props the stick in the planted Y to roast the rabbit over the flames.

Simple tasks take minimal thought and exertion but make the difference between life and death.

A guy like Rick gets caught up in the big picture of it all, trying to sort out ways and means for the lot of them. Daryl knows that sometimes one has to just concentrate on the little things like setting up his camp and cooking his dinner. Watching the meat cook and occasionally rolling the stick to expose a different portion to the heat keeps his focus ahead of him so he's not tempted to look around at all the people not gathered around his solitary fire.

The worst thing to have come from all of this wasn't his losing Merle and the last of any so called family he'd ever had.

The worst is his having found a group of people that he would fight and die for, like family was supposed to; without any of them realizing it or seeing how damned hard it is for him to accept how far inside they'd all gotten.