Today, Daryl had come to the prison library to return The Complete Short Stories of O'Henry. He'd grabbed it because of the author's name – the same last name as the beautiful, young fourth grade teacher who had taken an interest in him and then vanished from his life. He'd taken the book on his latest tracking expedition with Michonne, which had once again resulted in nothing. He hadn't read the entire book on the trip, but he'd read a handful of the stories. The one that stuck out most was "The Gift of the Magi."

What a couple of dumb asses, he'd thought when he got to the last page. The woman had sold her hair to buy her husband a chain for his pocket watch, and he'd sold his pocket watch to buy her a comb for her hair. Now the idiots had nothing but a couple of useless presents.

But when he'd clicked off the flashlight, and rolled on his side and closed his eyes, Daryl hadn't been able to stop thinking about that story, about what it must be like to love someone so much that you'd sell your most prized possession just to make that person happy. Not just to love someone like that – but, more amazingly, to be loved that way in return.

He was sliding The Complete Stories of O'Henry back on the shelf when he heard the door slam open against the wall. The thud was followed by a girlish giggle and a boyish laugh. Daryl was on the other side of the row of books, where he couldn't see or be seen. The sound of smacking lips filled the library, followed by a table screeching a few inches across the floor, and then Maggie's voice: "Fuck me. Fuck me right here."

Oh shit. Daryl looked frantically around, but there was only one exit from this library, and that was through the front door. So he cleared his throat, loudly, and then kicked the metal bottom of the book case so that it clanged.

"What was that?" came Glen's voice.

"Walker?" Maggie asked nervously.

A click click resounded in the library as one member of the couple racked back his or her handgun.

Oh shit. They were going to start clearing the aisles, and people could be awfully jumpy in a world full of walkers. So, as much as he hated to do it, Daryl said, "Just me."

"Daryl?" Glenn asked. He appeared at the end of the aisle. With his thumb, he slid up his safety and then holstered his handgun. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Returnin' a book. 'Cause this here's a lieberry."

"Oh." Glenn's tan skin reddened, the way it had when he'd been drinking at the CDC. "We were just…uh…looking for some books ourselves."

Now Maggie appeared at the end of the aisle. Her blouse was off one button, like she'd done it up hastily and, when she realized there was no hole for the top button, just left it that way. She slid her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. "Yeah. We were trying to find a wedding planning guide or something."

"Mhmhm," Daryl said. "Weddin' plannin' guide."

Glenn laughed nervously. "But I guess a prison library probably isn't going to have one of those."

"Y'all havin' a weddin'?" Daryl asked.

Maggie was wearing an engagement ring Glenn had given her. He'd taken it off a walker. Daryl wasn't much of a romantic, to say the least, but something about that just didn't sit right with him. He couldn't imagine himself ever proposing to a woman, but if he did, he was pretty damn sure he wouldn't do it with a ring he'd slid off of a finger he'd chopped off some lurching, growling undead thing.

But he couldn't deny that Glenn and Maggie were a loving, happy couple, and that wasn't because they were about to fuck on the library table. After all, Daryl supposed if someone asked him to fuck her on a library table, he might be happy to oblige, regardless of whether or not he even liked her. After all, he hadn't gotten laid in…well, he couldn't remember how long.

The last time he and Merle – which was to say Merle – had picked up a couple of women in a bar, Daryl hadn't exactly seen things to completion. When they'd gone back to the two-bedroom trailer where they were "house sitting" at the time, Merle had taken first pick, as usual, and left the other girl for him. Daryl took her into his bedroom eagerly enough at first, but she kept doing things that turned him off.

First, she stripped, and that was all well and good, but when she was naked, she tried to kiss him on the lips. He'd never been much for kissing, so he kept his lips closed. Then she tried to caress his cheek with the back of her hand. He flinched away, thinking of all the times his father had shouted, "I'll show you the back of my hand!" So he turned her away from his face, to the wall, and pressed her palms flat against it. She seemed game for that position, so he proceeded to unbuckle. But when she heard the sound of his zipper rasping, she said, "Oh, Daddy! Yes, Daddy!" That was the final straw. It just plain creeped him out. He backed off immediately and zipped up his pants.

She asked, "What the hell's wrong with you?" and he couldn't answer. "Are you a fag or something?"

"Ain't no fag."

She shook her head and went to join Merle and the other woman. Daryl could hear them going at in the other room, and he went for a walk beneath the starlight. He stayed out all night, dreading Merle's ridicule and not wanting to see that woman again. He crawled back into his bed at sunrise. After sleeping for a few hours, he got up to eat breakfast in the trailer's tiny kitchen.

Merle emerged from his room, scratching his bare stomach above a pair of frayed, plaid boxers, and sat down at the tiny table across from Daryl. He raised a single finger and then lowered it into a droopy limp before he burst out laughing. Daryl flushed an angry red. "Don't worry 'bout it, little brother," Merle had said. "That just means more for Merle. More for Daddy!" And then he'd laughed again.

But Maggie and Glenn weren't just two people getting it on to get it off. There was something else going on there. Daryl had never seen a marriage that really worked, not once his entire life. All relationships between men and women were broken, sooner or later, one way or another, as far as he was concerned. Hell look at his own parents. His father had cheated more than once, with more than one woman, and that drove Mama to drink. Or look at Carol and that shit husband of hers, that man Daryl still sometimes wished he'd had the chance to kill. Or hell, even look Rick and Lori - they had stayed together, true enough, but there was always a quiet bitterness running like a river beneath the surface of their marriage. Lori had fucked Rick's best friend, after all, and still she'd nagged Rick almost to her dying day. But there was something about Glenn and Maggie that made Daryl believe that maybe two people could get married, stay married, and not grow to hate each other.

Glenn was looking at Maggie at the moment, his mouth half open, the way he let it fall when he didn't know quiet what to say. "Uhh..."

"Yeah!" Maggie exclaimed. "Sure. We're having a wedding. Carl can be the ring bearer."

Glenn's brow crinkled. "He's a little old for a ring bearer, isn't he?"

"Well we can argue about that later," Maggie told him.

"You coming?" Glenn asked Daryl.

"To the weddin'?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah, the wedding, which is going to be...um..." He glanced at Maggie.

"Tomorrow," Maggie said decisively. "After dinner."

"Tomorrow after dinner," Glenn echoed.

"Well I'll have to check my social calendar," Daryl said.

"You do that," Glenn told him, taking Maggie's hand and taking a step back. "Make sure you RSVP."

Maggie smiled, waved goodbye at Daryl, and followed Glen, giggling, out the library door.

[*]

The couple had their wedding, such as it was, the next night. Maggie wore a sundress, even though it was about fifty degrees and she was shivering. Daryl had no idea where she got it from. Glenn had a sports coat on that was about one size too big for him. Beth had picked a bunch of wildflowers and made Maggie a bouquet, and she was giddy to play maid of honor, though there was no best man and Carl did not actually bear the rings.

Carol had given Maggie her old wedding ring, and one of the refugees from Woodbury, who had lost his wife, supplied Glenn the other. Daryl wasn't sure if that was more or less romantic than chopping off a walker's fingers. Which was worse - rings from the living shells of dead people or rings from dead marriages?

Hershel did a great job with the wedding ceremony, talking in that folksy, calm way of his, about light in the midst of darkness and love like a life raft in a sea of adversity or some such shit - Daryl wasn't really sure. He was busy watching Carol out of the corner of his eye as she stood beside him watching the wedding. He was trying to determine what emotion was flickering in her soft, doe-like eyes. The feeling seemed to flit from happiness to sadness to hope to sorrow, second by second by second.

When the bride was kissed, everyone clapped, Daryl joining in two beats too late. Maggie flung the bouquet over her shoulder, straight into Carol's startled hands.

Carol laughed and looked at Daryl. "Just make sure you get down on one knee when you propose," she teased. "I'm traditional like that."

Crimson crept across his cheeks. "Stop."

[*]

Later that night, when he was headed to his cell, he saw Carol arranging the flowers she'd caught in a vase on her little end table. She spied him and smiled and that made his feet slow to a gradual halt. "Pretty aren't they?" she asked.

Not as pretty as you, he wanted to say, but he was afraid that might sound creepy or wrong, so instead he said, "Mhm."

"Wish you'd worn a suit to the wedding. I'd pay good money to see you in one."

He ducked his head and studied the cinder block floor. He would look like a goddamn fool in a suit. Carol had to know that, and she was teasing again. But sometimes she sounded half serious when she teased. He never quite knew for sure why she said the things she did. He peered up at her again. She was dressed for bed in clinging gray sweats pants and a pink tank top, and damn if she didn't look pretty in that get-up. Carol was a different kind of pretty than the women in magazines, though. A softer, more real kind of pretty, a pretty that came up out from the inside and then crept up on you, real quiet and stealth. "Right pretty," he muttered.

"The flowers?"

He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. "Mhm."

She ran a fingertip over the petals of one. "Not as pretty as the Cherokee rose," she said quietly and then bit her bottom lip, and he wished to God he hadn't stopped here. He felt like he was responsible for that sad look on her face - that it was somehow his fault she'd thought of Sophia - that he'd dredged up that pain for her.

"Sorry," he said.

She looked away from the flower and at him. "For what?"

"Dunno," he muttered. "Yer sad."

She walked over until she was a few inches from him. "That's not your fault, Daryl." Carol reached out and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, once, softly, and let her hand fall to her side. He didn't flinch when she touched him, and the tender warmth of her fingers felt good against his flesh, but he had no idea why she'd done that. She was the one who needed comforting, and he couldn't even move. He swallowed. His stomach flipped and flopped and flipped again. "Do somethin?" he managed at last. "Can I?"

"Sleep here again?" she asked. "Just...keep me company?"

"Mhmhm." He nodded. "Get my shit. Be right back."

He settled onto the bottom bunk again, after taking off his boots and shoes and jacket but leaving on his clothes. His crossbow leaned against the foot of the bed now. He thought of that man in the story, selling his pocket watch to buy a comb for his wife, and he thought maybe he'd sell his own damn crossbow, if that could somehow make Carol stop feeling sad.

The bunk above him creaked. "Thank you, Daryl," came Carol's familiar, soft voice, drifting down to his ears. "I'll sleep better tonight."

He had no idea how his mere presence could help Carol sleep, but it seemed to, because she was out before he was. Two cells away, he could hear the newlyweds going at it, whispering Shh's! between moans. Normally the sound would annoy him, but tonight he found himself thinking, Good for them.

Daryl closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.