Under normal circumstances the thought of taking shelter in a prison would have been unthinkable to him, but then circumstances could hardly be described as normal. Exhausted and half-starved from months on the road, the priority was simple – find a secure and sheltered location where they could all regroup. The women had grown a lot leaner during the winter months than he was comfortable with and Lori needed a secure place to give birth. That was how he found himself breaking into a prison, probably making him the only member of the Dixon clan to ever enter a cell block willingly.
They cleared a cell block, took out all the walkers inside and locked it down, bedding down for the first time in months on beds that weren't just a pallet of blankets on the ground. He couldn't bring himself to sleep in the cells, too many memories of Merle's jail stories for him to feel comfortable with that idea, so he had taken the observation perch as his own, dragging out a mattress and pillows to make it a little more comfortable. Strangely the block reminded him of home, or what had been home, that tiny run down shack that he had shared with his brother before the world went to hell.
It didn't take long for him to realise that he couldn't sleep through the night. If he'd harboured any illusions that having a roof over his head and secure walls around him would make it easier to close his eyes and sleep for more than a thirty minute stretch, he was sadly mistaken. He found himself always looking toward the door of her cell, hyper-vigilant for signs that anything was amiss and missing the warmth of her smaller body at his back. Sleep didn't come easier to him inside than it had when they were on the road.
Whatever feelings of discomfort he had were easily pushed aside however when he saw the effect of regular sleep, a couple of decent meals and a little less strain on the women. Hope flared in them, bright and burning, pulling them closer together as they began to try to make the cell block feel like home, the only home they'd had since leaving the farm in late summer. They were the beating heart of the group he realised. Without the women to bind them, to provide the warmth that they all needed, there was little chance that the group would have stayed together as long as it had.
When Hershel was bitten and they encountered the surviving prisoners, his only thought had been for the safety of the people who had stayed behind in the cell block. He could have put a bolt through the eye of each and every one of the prisoners there and then to guarantee the safety of his family, might have done too if they hadn't had to get the old man somewhere safe where they could stop the bleeding from Rick's amputation. He had waited for them though, knowing that they would follow, perched on a table with his bow aimed at the door. It had taken him a heartbeat to size up the leader of that particular crew and decide that the guy was trouble, it was in his eyes, snake-like and predatory. Daryl had known that he could never be trusted, that he would turn on them without hesitation when he considered the time was right. He would have killed the man where he stood, laid down his life for the people who were behind the locked door behind him without hesitation, but dying had never been a part of his plan and Rick had talked them into a compromise.
By the end of the day there were only two of the original five prisoners left, one lost to walkers, another, the leader, killed by Rick when he turned on them, the third had run directly out into a yard filled with walkers. The remaining two, both of them seemingly good men, had been left in a cell block of their own because neither he nor Rick were prepared to put any of their family in harm's way on a whim. He may have understood men like Axel and Oscar but that didn't mean that he wanted any man who'd been incarcerated for any length of time around the women who were fighting to save Hershel's life, not with Lori in her present condition. They didn't want them around Beth who was barely more than a kid and had the whole blue-eyed and blonde thing going for her, and he certainly didn't want them anywhere near Carol. They had trusted before and they had been burned. He was not about to let that happen again.
