It all gets a bit messy after Glenn appears. Merle keeps himself carefully neutral – which is more considered and calculating than Daryl has ever known his brother to be before, and it makes him even more curious about what has happened to Merle while they were separated. It's also a little hurtful, that his brother does not immediately and unequivocally take Daryl's side but that's an old familiar ache, and he hadn't really expected otherwise.

Still, the contrast is striking, the way Daryl had felt with his brother and the way he feels now with Glenn and Andrea here. There is no uncertainty, with them, that they will be there if he needs them. He can breathe easier, stand straighter, with them around. He can take up the space he deserves, at least partly because they believe he deserves it. And it means something, something big, that he feels this way now, about them, but didn't before with Merle.

Then there is a disturbance in the undergrowth – Daryl just has enough time to think for the love of God, no more dramatic entrances – and a walker shambles forward towards what must smell like an absolute feast. Everyone edges away from the thing, but no one is willing to break their odd Mexican standoff for long enough to deal with it, and it limps closer with that strange walker hiss.

Andrea heaves a long-suffering sigh.

In a single sharp motion, she pulls a knife from her belt, pivots, twists her waist and plunges the knife into the walker's forehead. The decomposing face freezes in a blank grimace and it drops, lifeless, as she jerks the knife free with a wet, ugly sucking sound. She turns back, knife held loose and ready in one hand, gun pulled back up to face the governor in the other. Daryl almost smiles as their company visibly reassesses her. The enforcers give her a look that is somewhere between respectful and lustful – she is beautiful, though he forgets it sometimes, in the face of her rage and despair.

Daryl looks to the governor, expecting disinterest or calculation, and instead sees the same interest as the others, magnified and sharp. He motions for the others to lower their weapons, magnanimous and friendly and now he is focussed on her, rather than Daryl. More than that, she looks back, and even Daryl can feel the air between them go sharp and electric and he has to actually work at not rolling his eyes. He's well and truly relieved to be away from the centre of attention, fair enough, but really?

He lets a little of the nervous energy out in pacing, ostensibly clearing the area but really because he needs to move – he can be still if it's called for, but he doesn't like it. Energy builds up when he stops moving, fizzing and bubbling under his skin like boiling water, and it boils over if he lets it sit too long. He feels better, less vulnerable, when he's in motion.

"Well," the governor says, "I was just telling your… friend, here, that we could always use more able bodies, though I only expected the one. The more the merrier, though. And you do seem particularly… able," he says. The men behind him exchange leering glances, but he smiles and the hard lines of Andrea's face soften into something frank and appraising. Daryl is almost afraid that if he doesn't step between them they'll stare each other's clothes right off, and he'd really rather not see that, thanks all the same.

"I am," she says, sharp and proud, and leaves it at that.

And that appears to be all anyone is going to say, so Daryl mans up and redirects the conversation to what actually matters. "Right. S'that invitation still open?"

"If you're all as useful as the three of you seem to be, I'd say we have plenty of space," the governor says, but if Daryl knows anything about men like him, he'll be thinking now and they won't be happy thoughts. How many people, all competent and confident rather than isolated and cowed, tied to each other rather than to him, would it take to upset the balance of power, shift it away from him? Not many, Daryl would wager, especially if they're as close and hard and competent as he feels his group becoming. They aren't perfect, there's more tension than you can shake a stick at, but living hard and on the run has forced them to learn each other and trust each other in a few essential ways, and it's more than the governor has with his people. He's not going to be happy to hear about the rest of them, unless he can find some way to break them all up into something more manageable. Then there's Rick, who draws people to him like metal filings to a magnet.

They could be dangerous, not to Woodbury, but to the Governor's hold on it.

"What are you talking about, Daryl?" That's Glenn, and, right, nobody knows what's going on here.

"Homeboy here says they've got a town, fortified," and he watches as the penny drops for Glenn, and then Andrea.

Safety in numbers, people to watch their backs. Walls to hold against the outside world, rather than running and running and running. A chance to settle, maybe even start living, rather than surviving. Somewhere for Lori and that coming baby to be safe. From the look on Glenn's face that's all he's thinking – he practically glows with sudden hope.

Andrea doesn't. He didn't expect it, not from her, but he's obscurely disappointed anyways, like this thing (this thing he'd found, he can't help but think) might be the thing to shake her out of the mire of despair and grief and anger. If he knows her at all, she's seeing the dangers as well as the promise. Maybe nothing but. How are they going to trust these strangers, after months of depending on no one but themselves; what will happen to the group dynamic; what will Shane do with all sorts of new people to kowtow to; can they really depend on the safety of the walls or will it be yet another false hope? And what if these are Randall's people? If they are, and they see Randall, they're going to put two and two together sooner or later – he's betrayed this town and they've helped. Worse, if they aren't his old group, then they are still at large, a roving band of murderous, raping psychos in the vicinity and this town presumably unaware.

"Is that right?" Andrea steps to the head of their little group and Daryl falls in behind her, dropping back to offer support at one flank, almost without noticing. He catches Glenn doing the same, leaving them pressed almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Daryl swallows around a sudden feeling of rightness, of pressing the one last tiny cog into a complicated bit of machinery and watching it slide like magic into a seamless whole.

He can't see Andrea's face but he can picture the merciless-lawyer look falling into place, like a faceplate descending. They lay into something like a negotiation of terms – what can we do for you, and what can you offer us – and Daryl tunes out the specifics after walls and food and basic, first aid-level medical care and a generator, patrols and protection and shared chores and scavenging and hunting. There's more, things that will matter to other people, but that's what he's looking for, and what he can provide. They've had to do more for less, before, and as far as he's concerned this is a good enough deal as long as he's optimistic enough to believe it is what they say it is.

He risks a quick, sidelong glance at Glenn, not smiling but somehow shining with bright, determined hope (because of this thing he'd found and the moment of pride is overwhelming), and thinks that maybe he can risk that much optimism, just this once.

Andrea finally brings up the subject of the real number of them, and they send Glenn off to bring the rest of the group, or at least Rick and Herschel to speak for them. Merle stomps over to the governor's side and glares thunderously, affiliating himself again, and not with Daryl. Daryl tries not to think about it but the snub simmers, hot and ugly, under his skin and he really can't stand still while they wait, pacing like a wild thing caged.

Luckily, it looks as though someone else found Rick and Shane while Daryl was falling into trouble, and so when Glenn returns it is with everyone. Randall is hiding so effectively at the back edge of the group that Daryl can't actually tell if they've noticed him.

Things do not, in hindsight, go as badly as they could have gone.

They don't go well, of course, not by any stretch of the imagination. Shane goes for some casual (vicious, murderous) fisticuffs with two of the others, from which Daryl and Rick have to extract him. The governor starts looking really suspicious when he realizes how many people there are, despite Andrea's earlier warning. Merle takes a swing at T, and Daryl has to talk him down. The Governor starts looking really fucking weird when he sees Lori, who is just on the cusp of the waddling stage of her pregnancy, to the point where Rick and Shane both bristle like rabid dogs and Carol and Maggie and Beth all edge in closer in a protective huddle. Rick and the governor size each other up and the contest feels deadly for all that it's intangible.

No one actually shoots at them though, or kidnaps anyone, or attempts to trap them in a building that is about to explode, so as far as Daryl is concerned things are still going better than the last three times they've come up against strangers.

When everyone's done with the collective dick-measuring, Rick and the governor settle in to talk about terms; who can do what for whom, and what is on offer in return. Once again, Daryl is only half-listening (Daryl trusts Rick enough to know that he'll do right by his people, and he's starting to get that as far as Rick is concerned, Daryl is one of his) but he is amused when he notices how similar the things they decide on are to what Andrea pushed for not an hour ago. He watches her listening and waits until she catches his eye, then tilts his own head towards them and quirks an eyebrow, sarcastic and amused. She rolls her eyes and shrugs – what can you do? - but she's smiling and he's more pleased than the little exchange warrants, warmed by the effortless understanding that underlie it.

What he's really interested in is the way people have arranged themselves. Daryl – too used to being on the outside – has become really good at hearing the things people say with their bodies, rather than their voices. His group is an obvious, cohesive whole right now, every fault line (but for the one between Rick and Shane, which is coming to a crisis point, anyone could see it) temporarily buried in the face of an external threat. While the weapons are officially laid down in the spirit of tentative cooperation – Daryl snorts just thinking the words, deeply skeptical – there is nevertheless a sense of violent readiness in the way everyone holds themselves, tight and coiled and positioned protectively around the vulnerable members (Lori and Carol and Sophia and Carl, though Carl bristles at it).

The farm folks, maybe unsurprisingly, have tossed their hats in with Daryl's people. That scene at the farm, along with whatever magic Rick's got of his own, seems to have been enough to build the beginnings of trust and loyalty, and Herschel looks more than ready to back Rick up. They're apart but supportive – Herschel stands at Rick's shoulder in order to listen, and speak for his family if need be but otherwise deferring to Rick.

The governor's people are in a line behind him with their weapons down, barely, and bristling with aggression. There's no obvious cohesion to them even now when they suddenly need it, outnumbered and outgunned, and Daryl can see why the governor looks so wary of Rick. Those men are clean and well-fed and strong, and Daryl has no doubt that even a few of his own underfed, ragged little family of misfit toys could take them out, because they're harder and sharper and practiced, and they know how to really, really work together.

Merle looks angry and uncomfortable and proud, and Daryl both wants and doesn't want to go to him. The comfortable familiarity of 'the Dixon boys against the world' is being weighed in his head against the total wrongness of the idea of crossing the gap between the groups and standing with anyone but his people, and the years of abandonment. He still chokes on a sick, desperate rage when he recalls the jarring transition from Merle-and-Daryl and their father to Daryl and his father and his demons make three.

His people, his new family, who don't want his brother any more than his brother wants them. Despite the fact that it looks like an agreement is being reached, Daryl isn't all that happy, suddenly. He tightens his fists until his short nails bite hard into the calloused flesh of his palms, and it doesn't help at all.

Glenn, suddenly, is standing too close to Daryl to be casual. He reaches over and drops a hand on Daryl's tense forearm but Daryl jerks away and glares, hyperaware of his brother and angry with it. His brother who, when Daryl checks, isn't even looking his way. Almost at once he regrets it, and Glenn's look of hurt confusion does nothing to assuage that, and Daryl feels himself wind another crank tighter, tense and frustrated and angry.

Lucky or no, things'd have been simpler he thinks, miserable and guilty and angry with it, hating himself for the treachery of the thought, if I'da never found Merle again.

I'm not even trying to explain myself anymore. The only promise I'll make you all is that I know where this story is going, and I will someday get you there (although by then it will be so wildly AU that it might be too weird to finish).