"Every great warrior must learn to endure and overcome the adversities of life."

Lailah Gifty Akita, Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

Cecilia's POV

Another week had passed and now the fence is fixed, we have the courtyard once again. With so many people helping, taking the bodies of the walkers outside wasn't that hard and keeping the ones outside away from the fence so it could get fixed wasn't a hard task either.

Two different runs were organized, one to bring seeds so we can plant them and grow our own food, Maggie had to go because she knows that kind of stuff, Glenn, Sean and a guy from Woodbury, named Joshua were going as well.

The other run was to collect food, anything that was edible and that we could consume now. Daryl, Sasha, Michonne and I were going on that one.

We didn't want to leave together so there would be more people at the prison but we needed to get stuff quickly and get to work on those crops so we had no choice but leave at the same time. Rick, Hershel and my mum were staying and I knew they could handle stuff here while all of us were gone.

"Do you always go on runs?" Amanda asked me as I prepared my stuff and put them inside a small backpack.

"I used to go on more at the start of this," I told her with a smile. "It's better than staying here."

"Don't you get scared?"

"Sometimes," I admitted. "And I've been close to dying a couple of times but doing this it's the only way to gain experience, it's not the same to just shoot at a target safely inside somewhere than being out there and shooting moving things that actually want to eat you."

When I was in Woodbury Chris, Amanda's older brother, told me he had never killed a single walker and he didn't even know how to shoot, obviously Amanda didn't either and she was a bit overwhelmed to see how bad the world really had gotten.

For the first week after we brought the people from Woodbury here, Amanda literally followed me everywhere, making me extremely irritated and I felt stalked but now, this week she had half followed Beth and half followed me, giving me at least some hours to myself or letting me spend them with Daryl, with her there, Daryl mostly avoids me, he can't stand her.

"How did you learn to shoot?" she asked me as I made my way out of the cell.

"I learnt before the world went to shit," I said, not wanting to tell her why I really learnt. "I lived alone, I had to be cautious. The neighbourhood wasn't that good."

"Oh."

I walked outside with Amanda following me close behind, Amanda was a really outgoing girl and always needed to have someone to talk to, she couldn't really be alone and I was completely different, I enjoyed some people's company but whenever I could have alone time I wouldn't miss the opportunity.

"You should go find Beth," I told her as I put my backpack on the back part of the pick-up, we were taking it while the other group was taking the Hyundai. "I'm going to leave soon."

"Right," she said smiling. "Good luck and I do hope you come back."

Amanda smiled at me one more time as she waved and headed inside the prison, looking for her next victim for the following, at least, six hours, I sighed in relief as I finally enjoyed some peace and quietness today.

"Somehow, I always do," I muttered as Amanda finally got inside.

We were going really far to look for new places where we can find food, we were going to run out of stuff if we just keep looking for it nearby, so that's why we were leaving so early, only about twenty minutes after breakfast.

As the other three joined me, I fought with Michonne over the passenger's seat like if we were a couple of little girls, I ended up going in the back with Sasha while Daryl was driving.

All of us were heavily armed, we weren't sure if we were going to be back by tonight and we needed to be ready for any kind of surprise.

"It feels good to be out," Sasha commented after about an hour of being on the road.

"That's why I always volunteer to go on runs," I told her.

As we again fell in a long silence, I stared out the window, looking some walkers outside but at least we hadn't run into a herd or anything like that.

Michonne had a map in her hands and was giving Daryl instructions, that was something I wasn't good at, I couldn't read maps, at least it was good Michonne won that seat because if I were there I would probably get us lost or Daryl would get mad at me and send me to the back anyway.

"So," Sasha muttered, breaking the silence again. "You two are together, right?"

She looked directly at Michonne's and Daryl's back not at me. Daryl and I hadn't bothered to tell anyone else about us besides our 'family' and we don't show any kind of affection when we are in public, sometimes we are not even close to each other so probably no one knows about us but the closest people to our group, including Sasha, Karen and Tyreese, had heard that Daryl was with someone, apparently didn't hear with who and they also knew Glenn and Maggie were engaged.

Oh, yeah, they got engaged. Glenn got a ring from a walker before the Governor attacked us and it was not until a couple of days ago that they told us all about it.

"What?" Michonne asked when she noticed Sasha was looking at her, glancing at the woman only for a few seconds before looking at the map again.

"Are you dating him?" Sasha asked, pointing at Daryl.

"Uh, no!" Michonne exclaimed like if dating Daryl would be the last thing she would do.

Daryl, who kept his eyes on the road, didn't say anything to Sasha, didn't even glance at her or said something about the mix up.

"I thought you were, I heard Hershel saying there was another couple in the group, mentioned Daryl's name," she said awkwardly. "I figured it was you. I discarded the blonde girl, Maggie, of course, Carol and uh, you," she said looking at me but then turned to look at Michonne. "And well, you two get along quite well."

I barely paid attention to the last thing she said, the word couple kept repeating in my mind. Yeah, I was with Daryl but we never referred 'our' thing as dating and never called ourselves a couple even when we were.

It was just weird to think that, I don't know why, it was just weird. Never even called him my boyfriend even when he is, he is my boyfriend and I'm his girlfriend.

"I'm with Cecilia," Daryl's hoarse voice was echoed in the car, shutting up Sasha who kept talking out of pure nerves.

She turned to look at me and I awkwardly smiled at her. The young woman looked quite shocked and I probably should get used to that kind of reaction from people.

"Oh," she exclaimed, probably feeling more awkward than before, but smiling at me to try to hide it. "I would have never guessed, well, you two look good together."

After that Sasha decided it was better not to say anything else and screw up again. Sasha seemed nice but it had only been two weeks or so since I met her, I needed more time to decide if I liked her or not.

Finally, after about four hours of being on the road, Daryl stopped the car in front of a big supermarket. We needed to be extremely careful because there could be dozens of walkers inside, there were about ten in the parking lot.

Daryl opened his window a bit and shot six walkers before we got out of the car, the others were not on his range so Michonne got out and she killed the last four with his Katana, even killed two with a single swing.

We got out stuff from the back of the pick-up, including my backpack and we ran to the entrance of the place, the shutters were surprisingly locked with a padlock.

Daryl cut the padlock and opened the shutter, raising his crossbow quickly and stepping inside. We didn't hear any sounds as we walked in, no moans, not things falling, just nothing. Michonne, who was the last to enter the supermarket, closed the door so no walkers could get in.

We all knew what we had to look for, we grabbed each a trolley and went to look for supplies. I had to look for cereals, bars, bags of chips and that kind of stuff, Daryl had to look for everything canned, Michonne went to grab bottled water, other kind of food we could prepare, like noodles and rice, plus useful stuff like blankets and towels, while Sasha went looking for shampoos, soaps, tooth brush and anything related to hygiene, including women stuff and even condoms, lots of people secretly asked for those.

As I put bag after bag in the cart, I never stopped holding my gun and I also had my knife on my waistband, I also kept looking in every direction every five seconds or so to make sure no walkers were around.

In no time my cart was full with big bags of different kind of chips and junk food, I hated that the bags were half full with food and the other half was air, that was wasted space. I also couldn't help but grab a few bags of chocolates. We still had the chocolates Daryl and I found on our run but they were running out fast.

When my cart was completely full with no more space left I pushed it as I walked to the exit to leave it there and maybe help another person or grab more stuff.

The closest to the entrance was Daryl so I joined him. He grabbed everything he could as I looked around us. Daryl filled the whole cart until a few cans fell to the floor because there was no more room left, as I did earlier, we took the cart to the exist and we were about to go join the other two when we noticed we weren't alone.

There were at least fifty walkers outside, they hadn't spotted us but we couldn't go out now. Daryl pushed me away from the door and we hid behind the queue of unused carts so they wouldn't see us.

Michonne, who was done with her task, was going to the exit when she noticed we were hiding and both of us had our index fingers on our lips to tell her not to make a single sound. She nodded and went for Sasha to let her know.

"That glass is too thin," I whispered to Daryl.

I remembered when we were in Atlanta, when we found Rick and the walkers surrounded the doors and broke the glass with rocks and that glass was very thick, this one wouldn't last long.

"Just don't panic," he whispered. "They don't know we are in here."

My heart almost stopped when I heard one of them snarling, the walker was by the door. I closed my eyes, trying not to make a single sound so he wouldn't alert his buddies there was food in here.

Just a I heard the walker getting away from the door, I saw Michonne and Sasha almost running towards us, they looked scared and agitated, I even noticed blood on Michonne's katana, which she was holding.

"We have a problem," she exclaimed.

"What?" I asked her, not really wanting to know the answer.

"No time to explain!" As she said that I heard distant moans and those weren't coming from outside.

"Oh, shit!" I exclaimed as I stood up quickly and grabbed my knife in my right hand and my gun in the left.

"There are about twenty or thirty left," Michonne said quickly. "We killed about half of them."

Soon we saw the first walker and Daryl shot it with his crossbow as soon as it came into view, but more of them came walking to us.

Daryl kept shooting arrows as we ran away, we didn't want to fight in front of the glass doors, there were so many more outside and we wouldn't be able to fight them all, we had to try not to attract their attention.

We ended up in the aisle of toys and unfortunately walkers were coming from both ends. Daryl shot a few that were in front of him and Michonne approached the ones in front of her and beheaded them, when there were about only ten left, Sasha and I approached them, there were six on her side and four on mine. We killed them with our knives, Daryl shot the last two and then proceeded to grab all his arrows back.

I stood close to the end of the aisle, catching my breath. I was about to ask how they all got inside when I heard moaning too close to me and soon a hand was on my shoulder, gripping it.

I yelled, stepped back and pushed the walker away from me. I was too close to the shelf so when I step back so quickly, I hit it quite forcefully, making myself fall onto it and losing my balance, ending on the floor and some toys came down with me. The other three heard and before I could process it, Daryl had killed the walker, who was about to lunge at me, the dead walker fell on my legs.

Daryl quickly rushed to my side, kicked the walker off of me, grabbed my hand and pulled me up quite forcefully, wasting no time to check for scratches and bites as he asked me if I was alright.

But that wasn't the worse of all, some of the toys that fell started making sounds and wouldn't shut up. There was a horse toy that kept neighing and there was a small piano, playing a kids song, and a weird doll saying mummy and crying plus other toys, but those three were the loudest.

I stared at them in disbelief, knowing all that sound plus my yell was obviously going to attract some walkers, at least the ones closer to the supermarket.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I cried as I started hearing banging on the doors.

"Guys," Sasha said, looking down at the toys. "We could use these."

We all turned to look at her like if she were crazy, those toys were going to get us killed, but she just smiled at us, grabbing one of the toys on the ground.

"Just listen to me," she said. "We grab some of these and take them to the back and we leave some here too, the walkers will be attracted by the sound and we will be able to leave."

Before we could tell her what a great plan that was, she grabbed around four toys and ran further from the entrance, we immediately followed her example, grabbing four or five toys each. We stopped about four aisles down and threw the toys on the floor, making them sound loudly, some over and over again, we went back to the same aisle and threw some more toys to the floor, making more sound there as well.

Then we all ran away from there, we passed the entrance, but we didn't go far, we just hid behind a counter, only Daryl could see the entrance from his position.

I heard the glass shattering and the moans of the walkers got louder but not for long, they just went after the noise, but just in case I still had my knife ready in my hand.

"Come on!" Daryl said, standing up and running towards the door.

Michonne, Sasha and I grabbed a trolley and pushed them as we ran back to the car, which wasn't far, while Daryl closed the shutters to keep the walkers inside. The three of us threw everything in the back of the pick-up as fast as we could, Sasha's cart, which contained shampoos and that kind of stuff, was left inside but at least we got food.

"Hurry!" Daryl exclaimed as we finished throwing in all the cans, we then moved to the last cart, the one I filled.

I could hear distant moans and instead of looking up, I just kept throwing all the bags in the vehicle, it was not until the lone walker was close to us that Daryl killed it, so he could used his knife instead of an arrow.

We finished and the four of us ran inside the car, taking deep breaths, not believing we actually got out of there. Daryl soon started the engine and drove away from there.

Some minutes later he saw me through the rear mirror, I felt his stare and caught him looking at me. He took a deep breath before looking away from me.

"You okay?" he asked me.

"Yeah, I'm good," I muttered.

Honestly, I hadn't had time to search for any kind of scratch but I knew I had none, Daryl briefly looked for some and found nothing plus nothing was hurting or bleeding or anything like that. I knew he wanted to tell me I had been reckless and that I should have paid more attention but he said nothing, he just kept driving.

As we drove back to the prison, we made five more stops on small shops that were not far from the main road. That was the plan all along, go to the big place first and then to the small ones.

The first two places were completely free of walkers and we spent almost an hour in each one, grabbing everything from inside, except stupid things as souvenirs and stuff animals, but we got everything else, making the big back part of the pick-up almost full and luckily we got some of the stuff we had left behind in the supermarket plus some pills and medicine.

The third place was almost empty, we grabbed everything we could and left the place quickly. The fourth place had three walkers inside and we had a bit of a problem when we got out with the last of the things.

Sasha was being cornered by two, she grabbed one by its shoulder trying not to get bit while the other was getting closer, I shot the two walkers right in their heads as soon as I killed the one that was going after me.

The fifth place was a bit bigger than the other four and had more variety, we grabbed baskets and filled them with everything inside, it was half full but still we got a lot of stuff from there, including sunglasses, which sometimes were needed.

We got so many stuff we had to put some on the seats, Michonne had many stuff around her feet and on her lap, this was a very good run.

The prison was about two hours away now, we didn't have to make any more stops unless we saw a nice-looking place with useful things, but unfortunately it was already dark and we couldn't see anything plus it would be too dangerous right now, even Daryl drove slower to prevent any accident, like Lori had back at the farm, that made us take even longer. And luckily he did that because there was a car in the middle of the road, Daryl hadn't seen it because it was black and almost drove into it, if he had drove a bit faster he wouldn't have been able to stop fast enough and crash into it.

We got back to the prison at midnight, Oliver and some of the new people were on guard and opened the gates. My mother was also awake, she ran out of the prison and met us with a smile on her lips, especially when she saw all the things we managed to get.

"Leave those there," she told us. "We will all get those things inside tomorrow morning."

She didn't have to tell us twice. We were tired, sleepy and all we wanted was to rest, so we just grabbed our personal stuff and weapons and went inside.

Luckily, when we went to the smaller grocery shops, instead of just throwing the stuff in, we left them inside the baskets. It would be easier for the people to just grab a basket and bring the stuff inside, we got about eight of those.

Sasha went to block D, where everyone else was staying while all of us walked into block C. Daryl and I said good-bye to Michonne just before we went up the stairs, we usually go up two steps at a time but this time we were too tired we went up step by step.

When we reached my cell, without warming, Daryl flipped me around and wrapped his strong arms around me, resting his head on the top of mine, surprised, I hugged him back.

"What was that for?"I asked when he let go of me.

"I almost lost you today," he muttered as he leant in and pecked my lips.

"I'm fine," I told him. "There are no scratches or anything." Daryl still didn't look that relieved. "What? Do you want to see for yourself?"

I pulled my sleeve all the way up and showed him all my right arm and shoulder, where the walker grabbed me, even showed him around my neck and collarbone. We stood by the window so the moonlight could help him look better.

"See?" I mumbled. "There's nothing there."

He lowered his head and gently kissed a part close to my collarbones and then kissed my cheek before he pecked my forehead, I was surprised by his soft touches because he normally isn't like this. We barely share moments like this and I wasn't complaining we were now.

"I seriously thought I was going to lose you today," he muttered sadly.

"For that one walker?" I asked with a soft chuckle. "It's going to take more than that to bring me down."

"Mainly, but we were trapped in there and I seriously had no idea how we were going to get out."

"But we did and now we are back at the prison, I'm seriously okay, Daryl," I told him, raising my hand and resting it against his cheek. "I didn't know how we were going to get out but I knew we would find a way. You won't lose me that easily."
I smiled at him before slowly closing the space between us and softly kissed his lips, when I broke the kiss I rested my forehead against his and grabbed his hands in mine, intertwining our fingers.

"I don't want you going on more runs," he said and I immediately opened my mouth to object but he spoke, stopping me from it. "But I know that I can't just lock you here so I suppose you'll be stuck with me on every run."

"Every run?" I asked with a chuckle. "Every single one?"

"I'm afraid so," he muttered.

"Hmm, I don't know," I said with a small smirk. "I would prefer to go with Michonne."

Daryl chuckle softly at my statement. He let go of my hands, put his on either side of my face, brought it closer to him and kissed the top of my head.

"Too bad," he said before dropping his hands to his sides and walking away from me.

"Why are you just walking away?" I exclaimed, a bit frustrated about that, not caring that I had raised my voice.

"I'm tired," he said with a shrug. "I want to sleep."

"Without a good-night kiss?" I asked as I went after him.

"I just kissed you several times," he said with a chuckle. "Can't have enough of me, Peletier?"

"Don't be so full of yourself, Dixon," I exclaimed with a wink as I walked closer to him.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and crashed my lips against his, he kissed back right away. This one was more than a single peck but still, it wasn't a French kiss or anything like that. I sensed he was about to pull away so I deepened the kiss, not wanting to let him go just yet.

I slowly gripped the end of his hair as he held me even tighter, pulling me even closer to his body. I slowly pulled away, keeping my eyes closed a bit longer.

"Good night, Daryl," I said as I looked up at him with a smile before I turned around, about to walk to my room.

"That wasn't a good night kiss, you know?"

"You almost lost me today, Daryl," I said in a teasing voice but I didn't turn around to face him. "I think I have a good enough excuse to kiss you like that."

"Cecilia," I nodded at him to let him know I was listening but he didn't say anything else, he spun me around and pecked my lips one last time. "Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Dixon," I told him with a grin on my face.

I slowly made my way to the cell and lied down on my bed, the whole night the smile on my lips never went away, not even when I actually almost died today.

Hello again everyone! I hope you liked the first chapter of the sequel (especially because there was some action and a bit more of Darcilia/Ceryl than in the last book) and that you will like the coming chapters!

I'd appreciate if you tell me what you think of the cover, even though I know it sucks. It's kind of plain I suppose. I will make another one soon, I liked it when I made it but now...

Anyway, I will be working in a trailer/video for the story, I hope I have enough inspiration to finish it this time because last time I couldn't :(

And please let me know your opinions! :) xx