Daryl Dixon sat with his back against the concrete, crossbow at the ready. Outside, the storm raged on. They had moved everyone into the laundry room. Rick and Carl guarded one steel door, him and Carol another. Michonne, Tyrese, Sasha, Maggie and Glen were in the tombs, just in case the storm brought their barriers down. They hadn't had much time to prepare for the tornado. It was only that morning that Hershel had noticed the clouds forming on the horizon.

"They'll roll in here before dark," he had warned. He hadn't been wrong. Rick, he rarely ever played the role of fearless leader these days, had instantly flown into action, getting everyone into the middle of the prison.

Daryl's job was to make sure the storm didn't blow any walkers in. He was supposed to keep everyone safe. Most of the kids had fallen asleep, their heads burrowed into their parents' chests. The adults weren't so lucky, they stared out in front of them. It was dark, now. Daryl guessed that it was probably around midnight. Nothing to see; only the storm to hear.

Everyone was worried about the tombs. That's why such a large team had been dispatched there. Everyone almost knew that the high winds would blow their make-shift barriers away. And then the walkers would be on them.

No one knew what to expect. It was the first time a tornado had blown through since the disease had spread.

Daryl fiddled with his crossbow. In one corner of the room, he could just make out Hershel reading his Bible to Beth. Some passage about the great flood.

"Relax," Carol whispered to him, her hand grazing his arm. "If we're lucky, there won't be a tornado at all."

Daryl snorted.

"When are we lucky?"

One of the Woodbury refugees asked Hershel to read louder. The old man's voice began to carry throughout the room.

The first time Daryl had ever gone to church, he was twelve years old. Maddie's father was a preacher. He lent Daryl a shirt and tie, they were of course huge on the scrawny boy. Merle was in the military by then, otherwise, Daryl would have never gone.

Madeline James. That was her name. She was the one tomboy who ran around with the same little group of boys he did growing up. He first met her in first grade, same time he met the others. But, he never really noticed her until that day, about a year later, when he caught up to the bikes, and saw his house up in flames. Maddie had turned, her brown pigtails bouncing against her face.

"Don't look, Daryl!" she said. "Don't look!"

The other boys, they just stared, not knowing what to do. But, Maddie, she had leapt off her bike, nearly tackling Daryl to the ground as she tried to pull the little boy away from the house.

"Don't look."

And when Will Dixon had come home not long after, cussing and sputtering, only Maddie had stayed behind to defend her friend. The others had peddled away as quickly as their little legs would carry them. But, Maddie stayed. Sometimes, he could still feel her tiny hand in his, her pigtails brushing against his face. She cried harder than he did that day. A year later, when he got lost in the woods trying to run away from home, Maddie was the only one who looked for him. She searched the woods every day, too scared to tell her parents for fear that Will Dixon had finally killed the boy and gotten rid of the body. To tell the adults would only make it real. At any rate, Maddie was the only one who noticed his miraculous return, either.

"Daryl," Rick's voice snapped him back to the task at hand. "I don't like this sitting and waiting. Take Carol, go check the cell blocks. Make sure they're secure." The cop leaned in, whispering lest any of the refugees hear. "And check on the others. Make sure nothing's happened."

Daryl gave a swift nod, and sprung to his feet. He nodded for Carol to come with him.

They made their way quietly down the prison halls, Carol's tiny flashlight providing only a sliver of a path. Daryl strained to hear the sound of walkers over the steady dim of the storm. When all the cell blocks were secured, they made their way outside. They would double around, check on the others from the outside. No use risking running into them in the darkened tombs and someone getting mistaken for a walker.

As they walked around the prison, ever careful for stray walkers, they heard the sudden quiet. Then, the roar. The night was so pitch black that they couldn't see it, but Daryl felt the tornado's pull. He grabbed Carol, running back to the first door. But, he knew they would never make it. So he dove towards a wall, throwing Carol under him. He tried to cover her wiry body with his. The last thing he heard was the sound of her choking sobs, almost completely being drowned out by the tornado's roar. Then, there was nothing. Just black.

Maddie and Hunter Dixon were sacred secrets, Merle had been the only one left living besides Daryl who had known about them at all. And Merle had taken them to the grave with him. For all his taunts and threats, they were the one thing even he knew not to touch. Daryl thought about telling Carol sometimes, when he would sit up with her at night while she mourned for her daughter. But, he always talked himself out of it. Maddie and Hunter hadn't seen the world like it was now-the only real silver lining to this whole thing that Daryl could find. It seemed wrong to drag them into it. He thought about them every day, and that would have to be enough. They were his. They had been in life, and now they were in death. He needed no sympathy, no pity, no understanding. They had been dead a long time. Talking about them, giving them to other people like that, wouldn't make a difference.

Maddie and Daryl had gotten married almost immediately after they graduated high school. Maddie's father, who everyone just called Rev, had gotten a preaching job back in his home state of Louisiana. Maddie was going to go with her family. Daryl was just ready to go anywhere Maddie did. Besides, they both knew that Daryl wouldn't ever make it without Maddie around. After Merle had all but abandoned him, Maddie had stepped in to keep Will from killing his younger son. It was Maddie who snuck Daryl into her living room every night for the last ten years of their life. So, just shy of eighteen, they got married. Maddie started going to a community school for nursing. Daryl got a job laying asphalt for the parish. He worked twelve hour shifts in the Louisiana heat, but he got to come home every night to Maddie in a tiny little trailer that they called home. What could be better than that?

Rev James always said that Daryl was the kind of man who needed direction. He was only ever useful when he was needed. Maddie needed him. Daryl couldn't explain how, or why, but she did. She was smarter than him, kinder than him, better than him. And she wanted him to stick around. She needed him, and more to the point, found him worth needing. No one, not a single person in his entire life, had ever found Daryl Dixon worthwhile before Maddie. Not even Merle.

He had never held a baby before he became a father when he was twenty-three. Hunter James Dixon was born at 3:45 a.m. August 30th. Daryl hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours. He hadn't let the hospital for eighteen hours. Yet, when the doctor handed Hunter over, that was it. He looked down, and his heart was just gone. Given away to that tiny little boy with the mushed up face and Maddie's green eyes.

"You're a natural," the nurse told him. "You'd think you'd been holding babies all your life."

No one had ever loved their son the way Daryl had loved Hunter. For the first three days of the boy's life, Daryl refused to put him in the crib. SIDS was prevalent back then. No one could explain why these babies just quit breathing. The thought terrified Daryl. For three days, he just sat and held the boy. Despite what Maddie, her parents, or anyone told him. When they finally convinced Daryl to lay Hunter down, Daryl lay beside the boy's bassinet, his hand on the boy's chest. Every time the boy's breathing changed, even in the slightest, Daryl would startle awake. He would stare at Hunter, only comforted when the boy's breathing resumed normally. Then, he would lay back down, his eyes never completely closing, listening for Hunter's breaths.

Life just fell into place, then. He got a night job working construction so someone would always be at home with Hunter. Him and Maddie barely saw each other, they both worked twelve hour shifts. Only crossing paths when the other was going out the door. For over a year they did this. And they didn't even complain. It meant food on the table, bills paid, and they could buy things for their son and never have to worry about whether or not they could afford it.

All Maddie ever said to Daryl, when she saw him, was that this was a "new day" for him. He couldn't rewrite the past. But, he could paint over it with something better. Something happier. He loved his new life. Sunday, the only day that him and Maddie both had off, was the happiest day of the week for him. He'd wake up early, go deer hunting, just daydreaming of the day when Hunter was old enough to join him. He had already bought the boy his very first gun, a tiny little BB gun for when he finally grew into it.

He'd come home, shower, put on his shirt and tie. Then, it was up to him to get Hunter ready while Maddie did her thing in the bathroom. The little boy was getting more and more wiggly as he got older. But, Daryl couldn't help but laugh watching the boy squirm around trying to kick his shoes off before Daryl could even got them on. Then it was to Rev's church. Daryl was a deacon. Sometimes, at night when he couldn't sleep, he'd remember that tiny one-room church. Passing the offering plate. Giving tissues to those so overcome with the Holy Spirit that they wept. After church, it was to the James'. Molly James, Maddie's mother, could fry up a mean catfish.

It was a simple life. A country life. It was exactly the life that Daryl had wanted.

Then, came the storm. Just like with the prison, the parish didn't get much warning. When the sirens went off, Daryl knew his little family would never make it in their tin can of a trailer. They got in Maddie's car, and headed towards his in-laws.

They never noticed the bridge was washed out before they were already on it. He didn't remember much after that. It came to him in bursts. He remembered the car floating down the rising creek. Maddie unbuckling Hunter from his car seat, clutching him to her. She was crying. Daryl assured them that he would get them out of there safely. They rolled down the driver side window, and tried to swim with the current to the shore. Daryl remembers holding on to them, Maddie's arm wrapped tightly around his shoulder. Then, he felt nothing. Only the water around him. By the time he looked back, they were gone. Swept away.

It was almost a week before the police found the bodies washed up on the bank two miles in the opposite direction. The whole time, Daryl was convinced that they would find them. A little worse for wear, but alive.

Maddie's parents sat on either side of him at the funeral, holding him up. A week later, he was driving his truck back to Georgia. He could no longer stomach the sight of Louisiana. He started drinking heavily. Ended up broke and living with his father again. Rev James kept calling, trying to save Daryl's lost soul. He even drove all the way up to Georgia once to no avail. Daryl would not budge.

When the dead started walking, Daryl wondered what had happened to Maddie's parents. If they were still alive. If they had died before the disease spread. For the most part, he tried not to think about it. Just like he tried not to think about how far he had come from the man that Maddie had loved. He wasn't a husband or a father anymore. He was just some racist backwards punk, no better than Merle.

Daryl blinked his eyes, trying to regain his surroundings. A million thoughts rushed through his mind. Seeing TS-19's death on the huge screen at the CDC, wondering if that's what had happened to his family. He remembered hearing Carol's cries in the RV, and how similar they sounded to Maddie's the night she and Hunter had died. He remembered searching for Sophia, deep down feeling that same emptiness and hopelessness he had all those hours spent combing the creek. He remembered holding Lil Ass Kicker for the first time. Her tiny heaviness not much different from Hunter's.

"Daryl, you awake, man?" that was Rick's voice calling to him now. Daryl's head spun as the scene before him began to appear. He was in the prison. The group was hovered around him, their faces worried.

"Did the walls fall?" he managed, struggling to sit up. Hershel stopped him, urging him to rest.

"There was a small breech," Glen told him. "We handled it. Wasn't a tornado after all."

"Sure as hell sounded like one," Daryl muttered, rubbing the sore part of his head. "What happened out there?" he looked around, suddenly noticing one person missing. "Where's Carol?"

"She's fine," Rick assured him. "She got a few cuts and bruises. She's teaching her knives class. Wind was blowing debris around pretty heavily. Must have whacked you pretty good in the head."

When he finally regained his senses, Glen and Rick accompanied him outside to survey the damage. The sun had risen in the east, casting his orange and red glow over the prison yard.