Chapter Four - Daryl

"Hey, Beth!" I shouted across the courtyard, getting the attention of the blonde-haired girl who was cradling Lil ass-kicker in her arms who was throwing a fit. She caught my eyes and tried to smile as Judith was trying to grab and pull at her hair with her tiny little hands. We walked towards each other in the middle of the concrete recreational court.

"Hi Daryl," she greeted trying to calm Judith down by poking her cheek and making a popping sound with her mouth.

I shrugged my bow further onto my back and signalled for Beth to hand Lil ass-kicker over. I took the whining baby into my arms and cradled her back and forth until she calmed down. Eventually, she was content mumbling her own little tune and playing with the collar of my plaid shirt.

I looked down at Beth's blue eyes. Despite everything that had happened to her and everything she had been through, there was still a sparkle in her eyes. She somehow still saw something good in this world - that was rare. Something I had given up a long time ago. When I lost her.

My world turned dark.

"It's my turn on the gate with Carl, do you think you can look after her?" she asked, "She's been fed and changed, I think she just wants to play with someone." I looked at her hesitantly, my shoulders tensing. "It's okay if not," she looked towards the gate where Carl was waiting for her, "I can find Carol."

"Nah, you go," I glanced down at Judith and her brown eyes speckled with green met mine and I mustered a small smile. "I can do it."

She nodded her head and broke into a slow jog down to the gates to meet the boy with the sheriff hat who was waiting for her.

I rearranged my grasp on her and she giggled and waved goodbye to Beth. I let her play with my fingers as I walked into the cell block, nodding to Maggie and Glenn as they passed. I pulled back the curtain to my cell and shifted around the blankets with my free hand before placing her down on the bed. She wriggled around before falling onto her back kicking her legs in the air as she took the corner of the blanket in her mouth and started biting down on the roughened cotton fabric.

I rummaged around in the makeshift drawers made from old plastic storage boxes opposite the bed until I found what I was looking for - a rubber yellow and pink circular teething toy that Glenn had taken back from a run where he found in a daycare centre while he was getting her formula. Carefully parting her from the blanket I sat her upright and handed her the chew toy. She didn't know the difference as she held it in her small chubby hands and started to bite down.

I sat down on the bed beside her and began to clean my knives with a red rag. We sat in a blissful silence apart from the distant sound of Carol and Herschel talking in the kitchen and dining area and I could hear Axel sweeping the floor at the other end of the cellblock.

It took me by surprise when Judith hurled the chew toy across the room, bouncing off the brick wall. She whined in annoyance as she found herself with nothing to play with. "Guess you don't want that anymore," I said standing up just as she reached for the knife I placed on the bed, "No you're not getting that either," I walked to the corner, the cell was tiny so it only took me not even two full steps to reach the other side and I watched wave her hand around in the air like she was wielding a sword. "Nah, you're still too young for that yet but don't you worry one day your daddy and your uncle Daryl will teach you how to fight like the Lil ass-kicker you are." I reached down and picked up a stick, no larger than my hand that I had no idea how it got here but she took out of my hands and for now she seemed content with imagining a stick was a sword.

Smiling I sat back down and took the knife back into my hands and got back to cleaning it but suddenly I felt a sharp pain hit my right forearm and I looked down to find Judith giggling as she hit me again with the stick - makeshift knife - she fell back in hysterics as I looked her with furrowed brows and a smirk on my face. I couldn't help but let out a small hint of laughter.

"What was that for?" I asked, smiling and she just rolled onto her back again laughing but I picked her up and placed her on my knee. I held her up in front of my face and she stuck her tongue out at me. I pretended to look offended before I stuck my tongue out back at her.

I couldn't help but remember her. My little girl.

I'll admit I was never the father you would see in the HOW TO PARENT magazine nor would I ever win any awards but I always tried to give her the world. Every last bit of my wage went towards buying her new clothes or toys and I always made sure we had some kind of food on the table whether it was a squirrel or canned spaghetti.

Merel, Montana and I lived in a small cabin in the woods that was our fathers but when he died, when I was 17, it got handed down to me - thankfully Merle didn't want anything to do with owning a house or property he was happy to live out of my pocket. I had dropped out of school a year before and gotten a job working as an apprentice in the local car mechanics and a month before my eighteenth birthday Merle convinced me to get with a girl from the bar but we were careless. It turned out she was pregnant and we saw it as the right thing to do and we got into a relationship. It was forced but it was for the child's sake.

I was almost nineteen when Montana was born, and Ebony, my girlfriend moved in with me and Merle although he saw it as an inconvenience, two more mouths to feed. Ebony worked a part-time retail job but most of her wages went to her disabled mother so we relied on mostly my wage to feed four people. Merle was a well-known drug dealer and crook, he would steal things and sell drugs but whatever money he made from that went straight but into feeding his drug habits or paying his bail.

After a couple of months tension was growing between Ebony and I because she wanted to get Montana vaccinated but none of us had medical insurance and we didn't have the money to pay for it and a baby needed a lot of things but the money just wasn't there.

Then suddenly six months after Montana was born Ebony left, one morning I woke up and she wasn't there all she had left was a note on the kitchen table saying to look after Montana and she would come back and see her. I heard from her friends at the bar that she had skipped town to be with someone else she met - apparently he was a part of a biker gang or something. She left me alone to raise a six-month-old baby on minimum wage.

Money got even tighter and it got to the point where I resorted to stealing diapers and baby food but that still wasn't enough, I had tried to find another job but no one would hire a redneck, single father was a criminal brother.

That winter, she was barely one. She fell ill with pneumonia and despite not having the money or insurance I brought her to the hospital. She was there for three days but she was fine in the end but I almost passed out cold when the bill came in - there was no way I was going to find a couple of grand.

Merle was in prison at the time. Fourteen months for drug possession and distribution and I think there was an assaulting charge thrown in there too but from prison, he reached out to some of his drug dealer friends. Next thing I know I get a phone call from someone who knows Merle saying they can loan me the money to pay for the hospital bill if I pay it back by working for them - running drugs back and forth between towns.

I didn't want to get involved with drugs. What if somehow Montana got involved or I got arrested? Social work would take her away and I would lose everything but I saw no other way.

As the years passed Montana was getting older and I never told why her mother left and sometimes she would ask but only told her that mommy had to go away. She never did come back.

My debt built up and up, I borrowed odd sums of money here and there to pay for her clothes, Christmas and birthday presents and other random stuff. I still worked at the mechanics and Old Charlie tried to help as much as possible - with the occasional raise or odd bonus around Christmas time. It wasn't enough, we needed that extra money.

When Montana was almost four there was a scare with the police when someone grassed me out that I had drugs in my truck and they searched it and the house - they did find drugs. Merle, even though he was never the best brother but he did have some heart left, he took the blame - said the truck was his. He wasn't going to let Montana lose her dad at such a young age. After Merle got out he started to use the drugs less and when he did he was never in the house, he began working more to clear my debt with the dealers, I told him to get a job but he said it more important that I didn't lose watching my daughter grow up because I was running drugs back and forth or even end up in prison. Things started to get better, some money Merle got he put it in a college fund for her. It was barely anything but it was better than nothing.

When this all started - when the world went to shit. She was six. We had found the group outside Atlanta and when we found the farm, even though we lost Merle in Atlanta we had a safe place to live with a roof over our heads and food on the table.

That night. I had tried countless times to forget it but I couldn't - it was burned into my memories like a scar that would never fade. When I slept at night I was back there. When I saw a walker I was back there. Every second of my life was haunted by that night - the night I lost her. The night my little girl died.

I tried my hardest Rick had told me, the walkers were everywhere and she had slipped out of the back door to find Carl but I went to the barn and she wasn't there. I couldn't find her anywhere, I swear I ran around that entire farm looking for her. I honestly forgot how many times I almost got bit but it didn't matter. I didn't want to leave - I wasn't going to leave without her but Carol and Rick had to drag me away. All I remember is sitting in the back of Rick's car with him and Carl in the front while Carol, Herschel and I sat in the back. When I looked out the window and I couldn't see the farm anymore I broke down and Carol took me into her arms and I cried. I couldn't care less that I was crying in front of them - they could think of me as weak all they wanted but I didn't have the strength to care.

That entire eight months until we found the prison was the hardest time of my life, for a while I forced myself not to grieve, I could risk being vulnerable but Carol and Rick over time convinced me that it was okay to grieve the loss of my daughter. I found the most comfort in Carol, after all, she knew what I was feeling - she had lost Sophia and she was there whenever I needed to talk or sit with me when I didn't feel like being alone and Rick was always there to stand by my side. It's one of the reasons why I stepped up so much after Lori died because he had helped me when I lost Montana so I would do everything to help him and I knew I wasn't the best at comforting people so I left that to Carol and Herschel but I made sure that Carl and Judith were always safe and fed. Carol had begun to joke around and call me Uncle Daryl because of how protective I got over Carol and Judith which annoyed me at first but eventually I grew to accept it, we had all become a family - in our own ways.

"Daryl! Daryl!" someone called out as they ran closer, I instantly recognized the voice as Carls. I shot up - I thought something was wrong. He appeared in the doorway of the cell, and he was out of breath as he rested his hands on his knees. "There's someone at the gate, go!" he said with a smile on his face which confused me but I didn't want to waste any time and I grabbed my bow and jogged out of the cell block where I met Rick who looked equally confused and we both ran down side by side to the gate where from a distance I could see Beth standing with a woman and a smaller figure. Although when the light from the sun moved and I could see the face of the child, my eyes locked with the same ocean blue ones I saw every time I looked in a mirror and I ran quickly. Overtaking Rick with adrenaline.

I looked briefly at the woman, she might have been around twenty or twenty-one, her brown hair was tied into a braid with shorter pieces framing her face and her green eyes sparkled like emeralds but my eyes focused on the girl beside her.

It was her. It was my little girl. It was Montana. I don't know how but it was. She was here, standing in front of me.

Was this a dream? Please don't let it be.

"Daddy?"