𝐑𝐞𝐛𝐞𝐥《 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘹𝘰𝘯 》

s i x// S E C R E T S

"Sup?" Smith yawned, walking out of her tent.
Glenn looked at her with wide eyes.
"Nothing. Nothing's up. Why?" The black haired man looked around, suspicion written all over his features.
The people shared a few looks, silently wondering the reason behind Glenn's weird behaviour.

Daryl had made sure that, by first light, he would already be on his tent.
No one could see a reason why the man favoured a tent over a comfy bed but no one argued either.
By 6:30 am, Smith made her way to the house to check on the Dixon man but he wasn't there, and Hershel, himself, hadn't seen him leave. So, she made her way to camp. Well, Daryl had his camp set far, far away from where the rest of the group was. The Loner. It took her a good five minutes to get to the squirrels' man's camp. When she did, Daryl, who was lying on his tent, noticed her immediatly.
"Hey." She started the conversation the same way she always did. The usual 'Hey'. "I was gonna check on you."
"Said if I felt able I could come back here."
"Yeah, I did. But I still gotta check on you. Make sure those stitches stay in place. He looked at her weirdly and she threw him a book. "This is not that great but.." Daryl caught the book between his palms and analysed the cover for a moment. The Case of The Missing Man. "It's enough to keep you occupied."
"What, no pictures?" He questioned, indignant and she laughed.
A very brief moment of silence passed while Daryl tried to sympathise with the idea of a no pictures book, then, Smith spotted blood dripping down the left side of his head. Spotting this, she kneeled near him and pressed a cotton disk soaked with product he didn't know she had on her hand to his dripping wound before he could even argue about her closeness.
"You should go see Hershel, if it's bleeding, it's not a good sign."
"Can't you do that?" She stared at him after that and he realised he should have chosen his words more carefully, so he ended up using a stupid excuse. "I just got here, don't feel like walking up there anytime soon."
"I don't have the necessary equipment to remove those stitches and do it again nor will I bring them here-- that would be a mess, honestly. So, please just go see him, alright?"
"Alright." He agreed. She was almost sure he only said that because he wanted to put an end to the conversation.
Just when she was about to leave, Smith turned her head back.
"Just one more thing before I leave-- When you came back yesterday, I noticed you had ears around your neck. Why-- what was the reason?"
"Cut them off a walker. They hid me, hid my smell." He explained, looking at her expression when she pulled her eyebrows up.
"Smart." He cringed at the compliment. Was she being ironic? Was she making fun of him? "But, if you want my opinion, of which I'm well aware you didn't ask for, I don't think just ears around your neck will fully hide you. Next time try to bathe in guts. That, I can assure you will work." She offered a small smile before fully leaving.

Daryl watched her leave by the open zipping entrance. He wore a confused expression. What was she trying to do? She was being nice to him so she must want something from him, right?
From all this thinking, Daryl got to the conclusion he should keep his defence mode on. He didn't trust what was happening.

Rick laid out the plan for Sophia's search on the car bonnet once again. Smith spent the day looking for the little missing girl and failed miserably once more. Thirteen hours. Nonstop. From 7am to 8pm in the woods, covered in sweat and a few scratches on her arms from the branch snaps. Hot, burning sun, empty stomach and dry throat. She wasn't supposed to endure those conditions for so long but she was getting anxious by how fast the days had been passing by and no sight of Sophia. She stuck to the idea that the limit was nine days by what Daryl had told her and it just kept getting closer and closer to the limit point. When the sky appear to be becoming a slightly darker shade of blue, Smith took the light green Hyundai and drove it to town. She was the kind of person who would carry an emergency bag on her backpack back on school days and so, she felt unsettled without having an emergency kit near her and knowing Hershel was already complaining about how fast the medical supplies were going wasn't helping the situation.
The brunette woman got out of the car after parking it right in front of the pharmacy. It was almost absurd to look for medication in pharmacies or for guns in gun stores, since the outbreak caused people to absolutely raid every place there was.
She pushed the door open and a tiny bell above it rang, this caught the attention of an unknown number of walkers. Snarls came from behind the shelves.
"Aw, shit." She whispered and walked swiftly towards the creatures, stabbing the skulls of two.
She let out a breath and walked, contently, behind the counter.
Every shelf was empty, aside, of course, from the enormous amount of dust on them.
Knowing there wasn't anything in this world that wasn't hidden, Smith looked under every cabinet and busted every locked drawer. It was a good day, she was lucky, in a completely turned upside down pharmacy, she made some pretty good finds. Bandages, a box of antibiotics and one of painkillers and a box of child strip bandages.
Well, lucky was an overrated and poor choice of words. She found very few medical supplies but no Sophia.