RIDE OR DIE | DARYL DIXON

life goes on

IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG for Willow to get through to Daryl. A few dozen horrible dad jokes later, he finally agreed to let her up to attend the funeral the group would be having for Sophia and the others.

"Rather have my ears eaten by walkers than to listen to another one of your jokes." Daryl muttered, holding the screen door open for her as she stepped out. "This is it. You ain't doing nothin' else other than this, you hear?"

She nodded, squinting her eyes against the sun. She saw the group lining up in front of three freshly dug graves, the Greene's, Patricia and Jimmy standing further off to the side, separating themselves from the group. "Where's Carol?" She looked over to Daryl once she had noticed she wasn't with everyone.

"Told ya, she doesn't think that's her little girl." He watched Willow as she slowly moved down the porch stairs. "She wants to bury Sophia, not that thing." He gestured towards the grave on the far left.

They trailed over to the group, but they were all silent. They stared down at the graves in front of them. No words had to be spoken. They let their love and mourning be shown in their silence, and it was rather peaceful. Willow couldn't help but think that Carol should have been there for it, because soon enough she would have wished she was. She will eventually realize the body in the grave belongs to her little girl, no matter if she had been amongst the walking dead or not. There will come a day that the group will no longer be on this farm, and Sophia will lay alone without a goodbye from her mom. Willow didn't know when, but she could feel that living freely on Hershel's farm wasn't going to last forever, and Carol needs to take advantage of the time they have now to be as close to her little girl as she can be.

The harsh reality of things is that life goes on, whether someone demands it to stop or not. Life shows no mercy to those who beg for time, and it'll be damned to ever do such a thing.

Willow glanced at Daryl to her side, his focus on where the little girl laid under the pile of dirt. She could see through his tough-ass façade quite easily. It wasn't rocket science to know that seeing that little girl walk out of the barn as one of the dead completely tore him apart. He put his all into finding her, almost dying if it had meant he would have brought her home. She had respect for this man beside her. No one held a gun to his head to make him go out there everyday, hours on end, searching for her, yet he woke up each morning knowing the risks and he gladly took them.

Before even thinking twice about it, Willow slipped her hand into his, wrapping her fingers lightly around his hand. Daryl's eyes shot to the side, looking sharply at her with a hint of confusion and disgust on his features. She was in shock herself, but continued to hold his hand. He needed this just as much as anyone else. There weren't any words she could say that would be enough to make anything the least bit better, so she kept his hand in hers, hoping he wouldn't pull away.

He didn't.

-

They day had gone from bad to worse within a few hours.

Beth had collapsed in the farmhouse. Maggie and Lori seem to think she is in catatonic shock. Willow visited her briefly in her room of the farmhouse, Beth laying in bed staring at the ceiling. Maggie had began to panic. She had no idea how to treat Beth and the only person who knew what to do was missing. Rick and Shane had found an old flask sitting on top of Hershel's dresser. Maggie informed them that he had given up drinking when she was born, but it wasn't much of a long shot to assume that he had gone to the bar that was in town as a getaway. Rick wasted no time in getting Glenn and heading into town after Hershel. Lori begged and pleaded for Rick to stay, but Rick argued that it was the least he could do for their family.

Andrea and T-Dog had been working together on loading up the bodies of the walkers into the bed of Jimmy's pickup truck, taking them far enough out to burn them. Willow checked the RV for Carol, but the woman was no where to be found. Instead, Dale was found sitting in the RV with Sienna in his arms.