"Uncle Daryl!" Judith shouts and runs from the school house and into his open arms. He lifts her up in a bear hug and then sets her down on her feet. Michonne, who stands beside Daryl, grins down at her daughter. "How long are you here?" Judith asks.

"Just for the night. But sometime 'fore I go, wanna rematch on that firin' range."

Judith shrugs. "I'm still gonna beat you." The ten-year-old puts her little palm on the butt of a silver revolver, which is too heavy for the thick brown leather belt that stretches around her blue jeans, so that the belt tilts downward slightly.

"A'ight, Annie Oakely. We'll see 'bout that." Daryl reaches out and flicks the brim of Rick's worn deputy hat downward. Judith pushes it up again. "I gotta meet with the king first, though. Got some tradin' to do."

"Well don't try to cheat us."

Daryl pffts.

"I'll be around." Judith assures him and runs off after some other children without saying a word to Michonne.

Michonne watches her disappear. "You're the only one she lets hug her anymore, you know."

"She grow 'nother inch since I's last here?"

"Two. God help me when she's a teenager as tall as me."

Daryl nods toward the school house. "She ain't fightin' goin' to school no more?"

"I told her I'd take her gun away if she skipped again. She's ten going on twenty. But there are things she can still learn. And sometimes, she just needs to be a kid."

R.C. is the last one out of the school house. He spies Daryl and jogs over, a primer tucked beneath his arm and a satchel slung over his shoulder. "Hey, Uncle Daryl," he says. "Did you bring Hershey?"

"Nah. Not this time. 'S gettin' over a fever."

R.C.'s face falls, and for a moment, he looks just like Rick did when he was disappointed.

Daryl's always searched for a resemblance to his old friend in the boy, but R.C. looks more like Michonne. He's only a shade lighter than her, and he has the same sternness about his features, which can be suddenly relaxed by the same bright, white-toothed smile.

"Damn ya got big since I last saw ya. How old are ya now?"

"Six and two months," the boy replies.

"That's the important part," Michonne says with a chuckle. "The two months. He's not just six, are you, Richard Carl?"

"No, ma'am," he replies. "Where'd Ju-Ju go?"

"I don't know. She ran off with her friends."

That disappointed Rick-face breaks out across the boy's features again. "She never plays with me anymore."

"I'll play with you later," Michonne assures him. "When I'm done with a few things. For now, why don't you go put your stuff down in your bedroom and help Nabila in the garden?"

"Yes, ma'am." R.C. jogs off.

"Hell's with all the ma'ams?" Daryl asks when he's gone.

"They make them yes, sir and yes, ma'am at school. Personally, I love it."

"Ain't never heard Judith yes, ma'am ya."

"Yeah, well…" Michonne chuckles. "You pick your battles." She jerks her head toward the school theater. "Ready to trade?"

Daryl follows her toward the theater. On the way, he sees Henry slipping into Jessica's trailer.

[*]

Father Gabriel is arranging flowers on the altar when Carol comes through the back door of the chapel. "You don't have an altar guild to do that for you?" she asks.

The priest turns and looks out at her through one good and one almost-blind eye. "I don't mind. I have the time."

She walks down the aisle toward him, sits in the front pew, and stretches an arm across the back of it. "I used to arrange flowers for our church."

Father Gabriel sits in the pew on the other side of the aisle and faces her.

"I stopped going about two years after I got married. Ed thought the church ladies were busy bodies."

"They asked too many questions?"

"Yes," Carol concedes. Father Gabriel knows some things about her abuse past by now. After all, he's a vault that anyone can talk to without fear that the information will ever surface anywhere. "I missed it when I stopped going. Ed never went with me, so it was my respite from him, you know?"

"It's not a respite from Daryl, though, is it?"

"No, no. I wish he'd go with me and Hershey." She sighs. Daryl's excuse is that he has to get in position to hunt early in the morning, but he could take Sundays off. She lets it go, but she would like it if he was in that pew beside her and Hershey. "I wish Henry would, too." Henry stopped going when he was seventeen and started joining Daryl for the early morning hunt. That broke her heart just a little bit, but she didn't see the point of forcing him to go.

Daryl and Henry do come for Easter and Christmas, because they know it's important to her. And the entire time, Daryl looks uncomfortable, his eyes darting from person to person as he tries to figure out when to stand and sit and what to recite.

"I'm here because I have some news you're not going to like," Carol tells him.

Father Gabriel sighs. "The Council didn't improve the church expansion? I'm not getting my balcony?"

Carol shakes her head. "It's just not a priority right now. We've used up a lot of building materials on the dormitory, and we're going to need to build another smokehouse."

"People are standing in the back."

"Well, the Orthodox used to stand for their entire two-hour services." She glances back. "We could get a few folding chairs in the back. I think there's some extra in storage."

"They're lining the sides, too."

"It's a good problem to have," she assures him.

"This chapel was built for a camp, not a town. We're a town, now."

"I don't know what to tell you, Gabe. The Council has ruled. Smokehouses before churches. Physical food before spiritual food. Even the Bible says that."

"It does?" the priest asks.

"James 2:16, I think?"

"I think you're taking that out of context."

Carol offers him a sympathetic pout. "Maybe next year," she says and stands. "If you've managed to maintain the size of your congregation and you still need the extra space."

Father Gabriel stands, too. "Well, I hope I will. But you know the old joke."

"What's that?"

"How did the Episcopal priest get rid of the bats in the belfry?"

"I don't know," Carol says. "How?"

"He just baptized and confirmed them and they never came back."

[*]

Daryl meets with Ezekiel and his advisors in the "throne room," which is the school theater. At least the king's not in that damn ridiculous Richard III chair anymore. Instead, there's a rectangular school table on the stage, with a bunch of brown metal folding chairs lining it.

Ezekiel sits across from Daryl, with Michonne and Jerry on his right and Tyler and Dianne on his left. Or maybe his name is Taylor. Daryl can't remember. Tyler – or Taylor - is in charge of inventory and supplies and other bureaucratic details.

"Yer askin' too much," Daryl insists.

"I have the interest of my people at heart," Ezekiel replies. "As I'm sure do you." Ezekiel leans over to whisper to Tyler/Taylor and then rights himself again. "I'll tell you what. I'll shave off one solar battery."

Daryl looks straight at Michonne. "Help me out here."

Michonne shrugs and says nothing.

"Shave off two batteries," Daryl attempts. Aaron told him the Council will approve a trade of no more than five, and Ezekiel has asked for six. "'N ya throw in an extra two grams of penicillin."

Now Ezekiel leans in the other direction and whispers back and forth with Michonne. When he sits straight again, he says, "One less battery. And I'll throw in one extra gram of penicillin."

"One less 'n two grams."

Ezekiel glances up and down the table at his advisors.

"It's a fair deal," Dianne says.

"I'm okay with it," Jerry agrees.

Taylor-Tyler looks less pleased, but he doesn't seem to want to contradict the others.

"Very well," Ezekiel agrees. "Stop by the laboratory tomorrow before you leave. The penicillin will be packaged and waiting for you. Leave the batteries with Professor Moore." He extends his hand across the table, and Daryl shakes it.

Dianne pushes a paper across the table to him, on which she's written the trade deal. "Sign here."

She extends a pen, which Daryl takes, but asks, "Hell we need a contract for? Me and the king just shook."

"It just makes it easier to update the inventory," Tyler-Taylor explains.

Daryl scrawls his signature across the page. He starts to push back his chair to stand, but Ezekiel says, "Stay a moment." Then he nods to dismiss his advisors.

Before Jerry leaves, he leans down and says, "You have to come see the baby before you go. He's already smiling!"

"That's just gas at this age," Dianne assures him.

"No," Jerry insists as he follows her out. "Nabila says they can smile for real at two months."

When the advisors are gone, Daryl leans back in his chair. "So what's this 'bout?"

"It's not about anything," Ezekiel says. "I just wanted to ask how Carol's doing."

Of course he does. He always does. "Doin' fine."

"Are you treating her right?"

"Mhmhm."

Ezekiel smiles. He looks different with that bald head. So damn…normal. "She seemed very happy when I visited the Hilltop for the inauguration. It was good to see her so in her element as Mayor. I bet she makes a fantastic mayor."

"Does."

"She'd have made a fantastic queen, too, but it was not to be."

Daryl looks at him warily.

"You know…" Ezekiel tells him, "I've never blamed you for loving her."

Daryl taps his nose, which has been reset since Ezekiel broke it. "Could of fooled me."

"It was your timing that was so atrocious. Why couldn't you have declared your feelings two years before? A year? Six months? For the love of God, even a day?"

"Dunno how many times I can apologize for that."

"I don't want you to apologize to me anymore," Ezekiel says. "I want you to thank me. Thank me for finally putting a spur to your ass."

Daryl shoots him a puzzled look.

"You needed it, you know. But I think I know why you waited so long. You didn't think you were worthy of her. But after all these years, I suppose you've finally revised that misapprehension?"

"Nah," Daryl says. "Still wake up every damn mornin' beside 'er just thinkin' – hell did I do to deserve this?"

Ezekiel nods. "Then I suppose she made the right choice." The metal folding chair scrapes back across the stage as he stands. Daryl, surprised and a little confused by his words, stands, too.

Ezekiel walks down the stage steps, saying, "We're going to put on A Christmas Carol." He turns and points up to the stage. "Right there. The play. Let the Mayor know anyone in Hilltop is welcome to come see it, but I will need a head count for each showing. It will play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening the first week of December. "

"Yah serious?" Daryl asks and jumps down from the stage into the front aisle.

"Jerry's going to be the ghost of Christmas Present. I'm going to be Bob Cratchet. I tried to talk Michonne into being the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but she wasn't interested. It's too bad you don't live in the Kingdom." Ezekiel points to him. "You'd make an excellent Scrooge."