For the next forty-eight hours, he barely saw her. He had been occupied with making sure his brother didn't stir up any more trouble than was strictly necessary and keeping tempers from fraying when Glenn realised that Merle was there to stay. Hell he understood the animosity, that was why he'd agreed that Merle should stay out of the cell block and away from the others, forcing him to bed down in one of the storage cages at the far side of the communal area. It wasn't easy for him to see his brother shut out but trust was a two-way street and until the others got used to the idea, Merle would just have to keep a low profile.

When he wasn't needed in the cell block, or on watch duty, he took Merle through the tombs and out through the crumbling administration block, making sure that the number of walkers was kept down and there was enough food to fill everyone's bellies now that the supplies were beginning to run low. They never went far from the prison but the hunting trips gave him time to lay down the law to his brother about what was acceptable around the others and what was not. Hunting was one thing that he and Merle could do standing on their heads, as well as being the easiest way that his brother could contribute to the group without making a big deal out of it. To his credit Merle seemed more than happy to contribute, he'd been pretty quiet since they'd found Axel's body in the cell block on the day they arrived, restraining his instinct to push people's buttons because he knew that if Rick tossed him out he had nowhere to go.

Carol had been quiet in the days since Axel's death but she had carried on with a resilience that astounded him. He watched over her as they burned the body, all of them regretting that they couldn't bury him alongside the rest of their dead where he belonged. It was surprising that any of them had any tears left after all the death they had seen, it truly was, but there were tears and there were words of sorrow that expressed just how completely they had all accepted the convict into their family. He had lost his life as one of them and in doing so he had saved Carol from almost certain death, for that Daryl would ever be thankful.

She sought him out the day after the funeral, waiting until Merle was on watch and most of the others were elsewhere. She caught him in one of the darkest moments he'd had since his return, a moment where he was seriously contemplating the security of the place they called home and whether the added burden of being responsible for Merle on top of his other duties would leave him time to look after her.

He was in the cell that he had recently taken as his own, stretched out on his bunk and restlessly playing with one of his crossbow bolts, imagining the satisfaction of driving it deep into the skull of the Governor or one of his men. Rick and Glenn had told him how Carol had reacted to his disappearance, cautioning him to give her time and let her make the first move when they had noticed the distance between them.

At the sight of her in the doorway, his heart clenched painfully, she was looking thin again, tired too, stress and too many late nights with the baby taking their toll on her. She was alive though and she was there, that was what mattered, everything else was just details.

Hesitating on the threshold as if unsure of her welcome, her eyes sought out his own again, holding his gaze for a fraction of a second longer than she had to, leaning against the door frame of the cell. "I haven't had a chance to say, I'm glad you came back," she announced, breaking the silence.

Daryl felt a weight he hadn't been aware of lift from the centre of his chest. He had a thousand things that he wanted to say. He couldn't formulate a single one of them into a coherent thought. "To what, all this?" he asked, using the arrow to in his hand to gesture to his surroundings. Her eyes followed the movement, taking in the peeling paint and the furniture that had been bolted to the floor to stop the previous occupant hurling it at prison guards.

As if she had found the welcome she had been waiting for, she stepped inside and sat down on the upturned box that stood against the opposite wall. " This is our home," she told him. He wanted to close his eyes and absorb the sound of her voice, to hear those tones that seemed to stroke his soul and make his heart open up for her. The prison was not his home, if home was where the heart was then his was with the petite, blue-eyed woman who stared at him now.

"This is a tomb," he replied. He didn't mean it, not in the way it sounded, it was just that in his current mindset with the latest death in their number so close, he couldn't hold it back. When he saw the way she stiffened, he wished that he had. It was just a moment but it was one that he could have spared her if only he had chosen his words more carefully.

"That's what T-Dogg called it," she told him, keeping her eyes fixed on the wall opposite her, head tilted toward upwards in the way she had stood before the statue of Jesus when she was praying for Sophia's safe return. Even in her pain he found her breathtaking, the light falling on her face in a way that made her look like an angel. "Thought he was right too," she added, turning to look at him again, "until you found me."

Unable to form any response that would suitably acknowledge the look that she saw in her eyes and repay the belief that she had in him, he offered her the only thing he could, a smile. It was just a quick quirk of his lips, he wasn't a smiler by nature after all. Anger and aggression had always ran thick in him and his life had never given him much to smile about, but Carol, she spoke to the lighter side of his nature, the softer side that he had buried so deeply he hadn't even known it existed until she resurrected it breath by breath.

For what seemed like an age they just stared at one another, neither of them quite knowing what to say. She looked away again and then looked back at him, as if gathering her courage to say words that she knew he wasn't going to like. "He's your brother," she exclaimed, her tone filled with an understanding that Daryl had hoped for but hadn't really deserved, "but he's not good for you."

Funny how she could say so few words and yet say so much, hadn't he thought something remarkably similar while he was trekking through the forest with Merle? He had expected her anger, prepared himself for it and been ready to lie down at her feet and beg for her forgiveness, believing as he did that if he had been at the prison Axel would still be alive, instead she gave him exactly what he needed to hear.

"Don't let him drag you down, after all look how far you've come," she added quietly. Coming from almost anyone but Carol, the words might have angered him but when she spoke them he could acknowledge the truth of the ways he had changed in the last year. He was no more the man he was a year ago than she was the quiet little mouse who had put up with Ed's violence. They stared at one another, the air heavy with something that he couldn't name, and then their shared laughter broke the spell.

She stayed for a while, conversation flowing as easily between as it always had, ending up with him curling up his longer legs to make space for her on the end of his bunk. He didn't notice it happening but eventually he wound up sitting at her side, his shoulder against hers as she filled him in on what had happened in his absence and updating him on how Lil Asskicker was getting on. She leaned her head carefully against his shoulder while she talked, her neck relaxing only when she felt the tension ease from him as well. Edging closer, he rested his arm along the length of her own, keeping the contact between them friendly and reassuring even as his brain seemed to stutter and his lungs struggled to remember how to work.

The light was beginning to fail and the shadows growing longer when she left, hurrying off to help prepare dinner for everyone. Daryl sat a while longer, mind turning over a different set of possibilities than the ones that had consumed him earlier. It had hurt her when he didn't come back, he had hurt her. She was careful not to say it and he was almost sure that she didn't consider him to be at fault for sticking by his brother, but the knowledge cut at him nonetheless. He would make it up to her he promised himself, contemplating the warmth that still lingered down one side of his body. Just as she made him see his worth, he would make her see hers and then, when she was in no doubt about how he saw her, he would claim her as his own.