Daryl had gone back to the poetry section today, looking for that book by Rumi. It wasn't there. Maybe Michonne had snagged it. So he picked up a volume by William Blake instead – Songs of Innocence. His head leaned back against the rough wood of the window-wall, he began to read "Little Boy Lost":

'FATHER! father! where are you going?
O do not walk so fast.
Speak, father, speak to your little boy,
Or else I shall be lost.'

The night was dark, no father was there;
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, and the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.

He slammed the book shut and grimaced. Daryl didn't like the way the poem made him feel. It reminded him too much of the years after his mother died and Merle was away at juvie, when it was just him and his father, and his father would disappear for days at a time.

He remembered the time, with Merle no longer at home to step in for him, when his father had given him his first "solid beating." Daryl had knocked over his father's beer bottle with a blunt arrow from his toy bow. That was the last beer in the fridge, apparently, and his father flew into a rage that began with him kicking over the hassock. The overflowing ashtray rested on it, and cigarette butts went flying. Ash filled the air and coated Daryl's throat until he coughed. His coughing wasn't loud enough to overpower the sound of Will Dixon snapping his belt fiercely from its loops. He doubled it over, to give himself a better grip, but left the buckle end loose, so that the metal slapped and scraped when he began to wail on his youngest son.

Daryl ran off into the woods, fighting back tears and still smarting from the lashes, half hoping his father would follow and say he was sorry for what he'd done. He ran for an hour, past the stick fort he'd built with the neighbor boys, past all his usual haunts, until he was deep in the unfamiliar reaches of the forest. He tried to make his way home by following his own trail. He got lost and couldn't find his way home. Every day he foraged for food. He stayed out all night, thinking he would show his father - worry the man - make him think that he was dead. He made a fire the way Merle had taught him, rubbing sticks together and lighting dry debris. He gathered a nest of moss and leaves and slept a fitful sleep, until thunder roared across the sky and the heavens opened in a torrent of rain. He found shelter in alcove of a hill. The next morning he tried to follow his own trail back home, but the rain had washed it away.

For the next eight days, he wandered that forest, trying to find his way home. He managed to find stream water to drink, and grubs and insects and a berry here and there, but he was hungry. He didn't have a weapon, other than his pocket knife. He kept thinking his father would have to send someone to find him. He kept listening for the sound of helicopters and scouring the empty sky for one, but nothing and no one came.

Nine days after fleeing home, Daryl finally found his way back, terrified, wet, alone, and hungry. He wanted so badly for his dead mother to be there, or his incarcerated brother. Hell, he might even have been happy to see his father. But there was no one at all. His father's motorcycle was gone. The house was dirty and empty. More beer cans and bottles lay strewn across the living room than when he had left, and the ashtray was again overflowing with butts. The dust tickled his nostrils and made him sneeze.

Ravenous, Daryl went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, but he found the bread green with creeping mold. He grabbed a dirty spoon from the sink. The faucet sputtered and choked and then finally poured when he turned it on. Daryl waited for the water to run clean before rinsing the spoon, and then he went to fetch a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet above the stove. Eagerly, he turned the lid, only to find the light brown butter crawling with black ants. He was so hungry, he thought of eating it anyway, but instead he burst out onto the back porch, sat down on the top stair, and almost cried.

Maybe he would have cried, if a neighbor hadn't passed by, looked him over sympathetically, and said, "We're grillin' some dawgs. Wanna come eat with us?"

That wasn't exactly the way Daryl had told the story to Andrea, but that was the way it had happened.

The thought of Andrea made him wince with the strange realization that he missed her. He hadn't missed many people in his life. He missed his mother, long before she died, when she stopped reading to him and stroking his hair and talking to him at night and started talking only to the bottle. He missed his big brother, when Merle went away to juvie, and now that he was dead. He missed Miss O'Henry, when she left William Henry Talbot Walker Elementary School to marry and raise babies. But he'd since learned not to attach himself to people. So it was strange to think he missed Andrea, even a little bit. She wasn't even family. How had that happened? How had he become a person who had let himself care whether someone lived or died? How had he let himself like these people? Andrea hadn't even been particularly nice to him. She'd made fun of him for being capable of using "big words" like "observant." Hell, she'd even shot him on accident once. But he missed her. For some damn reason he could not understand, he missed her. He missed T-Dog, too. Sophia. Hell, maybe even Lori.

He would miss them all, he realized, with something like fear - if and when they died - Rick, Michonne, Carl, Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Beth...Carol.

Carol most of all.

Daryl more than liked Carol. He didn't know what it was he felt for her, because it wasn't something he'd ever felt before, but when he'd thought she was dead, and drove that cross into the empty grave that was a place marker for her body, should they ever find it, he'd felt a sorrow and a hopelessness overwhelm him, and he'd fallen to his knees on the dirt, shaking. Not weeping, but his body racked with a shaking he was afraid would never stop.

Daryl turned the Songs of Innocence in his hands now, feeling the rough fabric of the hard cover. He hated the way the poem made him feel, but he was also intrigued by the fact that a poem could make him feel. Cautiously, he pried the cover open again. He flipped forward, then back, closing his eyes until the book fell open to some random spot. His eyelids fluttered open, and the words came into focus:

I have no name
I am but two days old.
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,
Sweet joy befall thee.

"Lame ass poem," he muttered aloud.

But then he read it again. He couldn't help but think of Little Ass Kicker, sucking on that bottle he had given her when they got back from the run, her hungry mouth closed around the nipple, and her wide, beautiful eyes open and staring up at him. So when he heard her cry, he thought he was imagining it at first, until he looked up and saw Beth, baby in the crook of one arm and bottle in the hand of the other.

She walked quickly to the windowsill where he sat.

He swiveled outward.

"Usually I'm fine with her," Beth said, "but I can't get her to stop crying," She held the baby out to Daryl. "Would you try?"

"Hey, little ass kicker," he murmured, his voice growing low and affectionate. Daryl took the baby and reached for the bottle. He teased her tiny lips with the nipple, but she turned her face away and cried. Little Ass Kicker wouldn't take it, not even from him.

"I think she needs to burp," Beth said, "but I tried…and she just wasn't doing it."

Daryl rested the bottle on the sill and lay Judith upright across his chest. Then, the way he'd seen Carol do countless times, he began not to pat her back, but to rub it, up and down, up and down, up and down, whispering, "That feel good, sweetheart? You like that?"

Little Ass Kicker let out a great big belch and spit up all over his leather jacket.

"Ewwww….." he groaned.

Beth giggled. "Come on. You've had walker guts all over that thing. A little spit-up can't bother you." She took a cloth off her shoulder as Daryl lowered the baby into a cradle position. Beth began wiping off his shoulder. He tensed. She was a little too close for his comfort. He didn't like anyone touching him, except...sometimes...more and more...Carol.

He forced himself not to pull away. Beth smiled as she cleaned the mess from his jacket. "You're really good with her."

"She likes me for some reason," he said.

"Because you have a good heart."

Daryl peered at Beth curiously. "Nah. I don't." If anyone had a good heart, it was Beth. So good she could be annoying.

Beth folded the burp cloth so the spit-up was inside and then slung it over her shoulder again. She took Judith back from him and cradled her upright against her shoulder. The baby began to fall asleep. "You're just a big softie, Daryl Dixon," she told him.

He frowned. "Ain't soft. Ain't never been soft."

"It wasn't an insult."

"Girl like you should be afraid to be alone with a guy like me."

"Why?"

"'Cause…" Because usually a young, pretty, polite, well-bread girl would assume a guy like him was a danger, that's why. But he didn't say that.

"Are you going to eat me all up?" she asked.

"Ain't hungry."

She laughed. She had a little girl laugh, even though she was clearly becoming a woman. "Zach treatin' ya a'ight?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sure."

She didn't sound sure. "If he's givin' ya any trouble, just let me know and I'll – "

"- He's no trouble. He's a nice guy. I like him. I guess he's…like...my steady boyfriend now."

"Ya guess?"

She shrugged. "It's not like I have a lot of options."

"Ain't got to be anyone's girlfriend."

She smiled. "What else is there to do?" She glanced at the book at the window sill. "Well, I guess you found something to do other than making out."

He flushed a pinkish-red.

"Poetry?" she asked. "Is it romantic?" She smiled mischievously. "Maybe you should read some to Carol."

"Ain't romantic," he said and slid off the windowsill. "And Carol knows how to read."

Beth chuckled. "That's not why I suggested you read it to her."

He ducked his head and made a straight path to the library door, leaving a smiling Beth behind.

That night he did not read to Carol, but he did ask her if she wanted him in her cell again, to keep her company through the night, there on the bottom bunk, and she answered with a wordless nod.

In the morning, he left his bedding on the bunk. He didn't bother to return it to his own cell. His desk and maps and extra clothes were still there, but he was starting to think his cell was just going to be a dressing room and office from now on and no longer his bedroom. After all, Carol saw him leave the pillow and blanket and unzipped sleeping bag behind and said nothing. And when he entered her cell again that night, after checking the corridors for any threats, after she was in her sweats and pink tank top, which he once again tried not to notice pulled tightly around her pert breasts, she asked him, "Would you put down the curtain?"

He unfolded the thick, red fabric she'd tucked up around a curtain rod, and it fluttered out over the open bars, clothing the room in privacy, and leaving only the dim glow of Carol's desk lamp, which bathed her blue eyes in gentle light.

"Goodnight," she said and stepped forward and kissed him once, softly, quickly, unexpectedly on the lips before turning just as quickly and scaling the ladder to the top bunk.

Daryl stood in stunned silence for a full minute before he switched off the lamp and lay down on the bottom bed. The afterglow of the lamplight lingered in his mind's eye, and the taste of her lips lingered on his.

I happy am.
Sweet joy befall me.