"Come on, you can do better than that", Daryl said, trying to get me to hit him again, even though I had failed every time before that. I tried, in vain, again to land a hit. But, as always Daryl just hit my arm away, hit my side, and sent me falling to the ground all over again. "Come on Lil' Asskicker could do better than that!" I sat there for a moment catching my breath. Daryl dropped his guard again. "You know I thought you were better than this, but this, this is just gettin' sad now. You know..." As Daryl was talking I stood up quickly and punched him squarely in the stomach and quickly punched him in the jaw.

"Is that better?", I asked trying to taunt him a little.

"Yeah", he said standing up straight again. "First mistake though, you let your guard down." Upon saying that he punched me in the side again and kicked me in the stomach. I fell back to the ground again. He reached out his hand to help me up. I took it and I stood up. We started walking up the gravel road. "That was a good first day, kid. By the end of the week maybe you'll be better than me."

"Yeah, I doubt that."

"Hey, maybe if you do beat me, I'll get you your first drink, for winning your first fight." I nodded my head.

"I'll hold you to that." We parted ways then Daryl went to grab his crossbow to go take watch and I went back to my cell. I sat down on my bed and stretched my legs, as I had been standing on them all morning. My side was sore as well and almost certainly bruised. I took my hat off and placed it on the bed next to me, and laid back. It was quiet, apart from the hushed voices outside my cell and in the common area. Thankfully, Dad had decided to put all of the people from Woodbury in the other cellblock. So, our cellblock still remained just us and now Andrea, no matter how strained some of our relationships with each other were. That did make me think about my argument with Dad yesterday. Maybe I should go clear things up with him. I sat up again. I grabbed the hat off the bed next to me. I sat there spinning it in my hands for a while, before putting it on and walking out of my cell to go and find Dad. I looked around the cellblocks and I even checked The Tombs, but I couldn't find him. I finally went outside. I didn't see him anywhere in the courtyard, down by the gate, nowhere. But, I did see Herschel down in the field on his own. Couldn't hurt to ask. I walked down into the field to Herschel. He was facing away from me. "Uh, Herschel", I said to get his attention. He turned to face me.

"Can I help you with anything?"

"Yeah, have you seen my Dad around anywhere?"

"He's out on a run with Maggie and Glenn."

"Oh. Alright then." Herschel had already turned back around, and I was about to walk back away, but my curiosity got the better of me. "What are you doing out here anyway?", I asked while walking up alongside Herschel.

"Oh, I was just thinking. I haven't had the time to do that since we left the farm."

"What are you thinking about?"

"A lot of things. God. The future. Recent events."

"The forest?", I asked. Knowing almost certainly what 'recent events' he was thinking about.

"Sure. It crossed my mind." Silence then took hold for a few minutes, until Herschel started to speak. "I want you to listen, to everything I'm about to say." I looked up at him and nodded. "You shouldn't have shot that boy, Carl. But, I know you know that. I know that. She knows it too. I've seen how you've been taking it. You're getting angry at everyone and lashing out. You're pushing away people who love you. You can't do that. That's going to push you down a dark path. One that controls you." He paused. "When I was around your age, my father drove me from home. He was a violent drunk, and one day, I had enough. After he left the house I packed a bag and left. I didn't return for many years. I spent many years barely getting by. I stole food and shoplifted cigarettes to get money for a few nights at a motel. Then one day, I got a job working at a factory. I started to turn my life around. I met Maggie's mother then. A few years later, around the time Maggie was four, her mother got cancer and died not too long after that. For many years I blamed her death on myself." He paused again. "It drove me to drink like my father before me. It pushed me into a deep, dark, place. I pushed everyone out of my life and spent almost all my time down at the bar drinking my life, leaving Maggie home on her own. That was when I met Beth's mother, Annette. She was a bartender, so I saw her every day, for almost the whole day. She always tried to get me to clean up my act, but I always pushed her away. Then one day she dragged me out of that bar and drove me straight to rehab. She watched Maggie during that time. We got married not too long after that." He paused after that too. I was still trying to figure out why he was telling me all this. "The reason I'm telling you this is because I can see you're heading towards that same dark place I was in. I blamed myself for so many things that were out of my control. I made many mistakes. I took everything I had, everyone I had, for granted. But, I don't want you to take that path, Carl. The future is yours. But, if you keep taking that path that you're headed down, the one that I took, you're going to be headed to a place that no one wants to be in. And when you finally realize how much of a fool you had been, everything you had, everyone you knew and loved, it's all gone. I was only lucky enough that someone still cared about me enough to pull me out of that hole, and made sure I never went near it again." I thought about everything Herschel had just said, it really made me think, about everything I had done over the past year. "And Carl. Fix things with Beth. I know you both need your time, especially her. But, Beth, she's a lot like her mother, she loves unconditionally, and in life, especially now, that's rare, and despite everything you may think, you're a good man, and she knows that. All I ask of you, is that you don't break her heart a second time." All I could do was just nod. I walked back to my cell after that and sat on my bed. Why does he think that Beth would still...love me. After everything I had said and done, why would she still love me? I let every word Herschel said to me ring inside my head. Besides what he said about Beth though, what I kept hearing over and over was that he said I'm a good man. How can he think I'm a good man after everything I've done? I took the best thing I had in my life and shattered it. I sat for hours thinking about what he'd said until I heard Dad knock on the doorframe of the cell.

"Herschel said you were looking for me earlier." I sat up.

"Yeah."

"What did you need?"

I sighed, "I wanted to say I was sorry, for yesterday. I shouldn't have acted the way I did or said the things I'd said."

"Well, I'm glad to see that you're old enough to realize that."

"I've just been doing a lot of thinking lately. I realized in case something happened, to either one of us, I just didn't want the time we'd talk to each other to be an argument."

"Well, I accept your apology." I nodded. "Now, you wanna tell me why you were acting that way?", Dad asked as he sat on the stool that was attached to the small table.

"I guess it all really started after Mom..." I paused, not being able to finish the sentence, not needing to either. "I started getting really angry with myself, I blamed myself for what happened to Mom. But, whenever I told Beth she always told me, again and again, it wasn't my fault. But, after I shot that kid, in the woods, after you left for Woodbury. I did something. I did something I really regret. I wrote a letter to Beth. I ended things between us. Maggie, she tried getting me to fix things with Beth, but, I couldn't. I don't even know if I can. So since that day, that rage that's been building up has been showing itself. All that rage I have at myself is just releasing at whoever is nearby. And I can't seem to control it, I've just been blaming myself for everything. I know it's stupid. But, I feel like everything is my fault. Like maybe if I'd have done something, things would be different."

"Carl,... you can't blame yourself for everything. If we're being honest, a lot of it is really my fault. I never should have put you anywhere where you should've had to make decisions like for yourself. When we got here I should have been there for Mom, but I was too busy holding a grudge against her to realize how unsafe this place was. But, Carl, we can't keep playing the "Blame Game" with ourselves. What happened, happened. We can't change that. What we can do though, is make this place safe, better, a home, for Judith, and everyone else here. But, I need you for that, Carl. One day, I'll be gone. When I'm gone I need to know that you and Judith, will be alright. But, we need to build the future. We can't just let the world around us have control over us anymore. But, to do that, I need you. Not Daryl, not Maggie, not Glenn, not Herschel. I need you. Can you do that? Can you help me build the future? Our future." I nodded.

"Yes."

"Good. 'Cause I'm counting on you."

You know, going back to re-write those older chapters... God, I wish somebody had told me I sucked that bad at writing. Also, I'm probably going to be re-writing a few of the prisons chapters, just so everything flows better and in case any changes I'm making to the older chapters affect anything in the prison chapters. Finally, the new version of Chapter 2 is now out. Let me know what you all think if it's good, bad, just okay. Just let me know.