The rest of the day was uneventful as the group tried to take their mind off the situation. Nell cleaned the cabin even though she knew they would be leaving within the week and fixed up a big meal of cereal and some deer meat she found still frozen in the icebox. Lucy played cards with Annie while Dennis watched the outside of the house to make sure no walkers snuck up on them.

One of the worst things about the little cabin was that there was only one door in or out and the way it was constructed the windows backed up to a steep drop. Lucy worried that they might be trapped inside if the door was blocked and the drop from the window would probably cause them all to break a bone or two.

She focused more on the card game knowing that she was still not comfortable being isolated in the woods at night since she had always lived in a city. The silence by far worried her more than the dull background noise of car alarms and boom boxes blasting different kinds of music. In the city, the night never got very dark and in the woods it was impossible to see three feet in front of your nose. Although she had always enjoyed quiet time to herself, the darkness of the woods gave her an eerie feeling that was so different from the calm silence of a library or her little apartment she used to love.

Those damn walkers were so quiet when they hadn't eaten for a long time. That was when they were the most dangerous, quiet and hungry.

"Should I take food out to him?" Nell asked Lucy.

"No I'll do it. He's only seen me and Dennis. The less he knows about our group the better," she answered as she grabbed the bowl and told Lucy to set the table for them.

Inside the shed, Daryl was so bored he started counting the planks of wood in the wall in a desperate attempt to entertain himself. He wanted to sleep as long as he was tied up anyway, but every time he shut his eyes the same images played, Merle body checking the man that guarded him to cause a distraction so that Daryl could escape.

Merle wasn't the type to be a hero. When they were younger he used to wail on Daryl trying to "toughen" him up after their father was sent away to prison. The two of them relied on each other for most things since their mother had a nasty meth habit and always forgot about them when she got high. In a sick way Daryl hoped that Merle's beatings were a misguided way to prove that his brother cared about what happened to him, but he never believed it until that night at Woodbury.

Merle caused a diversion so Daryl's guard would get distracted and leave him unattended, which was barely enough time to make a break for an escape. When Daryl turned around, he saw his brother's chest filled with bullet holes and his face blankly staring in his direction. He wanted to go back for him, but it was already hopeless. No one could survive that many shots to the chest, not even Merle, so he sprinted to the wall and hurled himself over. Under the cover of the night, he barely escaped zig-zagging through the woods to obscure any trail he might leave behind, a trick that Merle taught him years ago when they were kids.

He slept a few hours to regain his strength under a log with a dead walker next to him to hide his scent. At daybreak he started running again. He wanted to cut the ropes first since he had been unable to the night before when a walker saw him and started chasing him through the woods. That led him to the small clearing where he was able to put it down only to be captured by the chick in the tree.

As the events played in his mind, he cursed himself for not taking the time to find a sharp rock and cut the ropes. It might have made the difference in his escape. Now he was trapped with no sense of where he was or how to return to the prison and the longer he was held captive, the more likely it was that Rick and the others would get killed trying to save him or cut their losses and take off without him. Neither scenario he liked to think about much.

With a short knock on the door Lucy entered holding a bowl of something that she silently handed to him.

"So how long ya gonna keep me in here?" he questioned as he took a greedy bite of the venison.

"We haven't come to an agreement yet about you," she plainly told him.

"You don't want to kill me though."

She was annoyed as she realized he must have heard enough of the argument with Dennis earlier enough to know that his chances of escape were better with her. Although she did not want his blood on her hands, there was not much of a reason to trust him either. If he escaped, he would probably be able to take them by surprise and kill them all. She wouldn't even blame him after what Dennis did to his face.

He looked past her at the door and his face went blank white like he'd seen a ghost.

"Sophia…" he whispered.

Lucy turned around quickly and saw Annie at the door peering into the room.

"Annie!" she yelled at her.

"Nell wants you to come inside," she looked toward the ground clearly feeling guilty that she did exactly what the others told her not to do by letting the captive see her.

"Annie, get in the goddamn house!" Lucy stomped her foot at her to scare her off and quickly asked, "Why did you call her Sophia?"

"There aren't that many in your group are there?" he realized.

"Why did you call her that?" she repeated hoping to get an answer before he thought too much about what happened.

"Probably only you and the man protecting some weaker folks," he deduced from her strained reaction.

"Who's Sophia? Did you kill her?" she pushed.

"No I didn't," he snarled at her, "Why would I hurt a little girl? Who the fuck you think I am?"

"What happened to her then?" she lowered her voice trying to coax an answer.

He sighed and looked off into the corner of the room. Before he thought about it, he found himself retelling the horrible story how Sophia was lost in the woods when a herd was after them on the interstate. One of their group killed off the walkers and when he went back to look for her she had disappeared into the woods.

"I grew up in the woods. Figured there was a chance she could survive out there a couple days and give us a chance to find her. I looked for almost a week."

"Did you ever find her?"

"Sure did, she'd been dead about a week. Her mother couldn't stop cryin' for days though no one blamed her. Seein' ya kid growling like an animal. Ugh, that whole search for fuckin' nothing."

"That means a lot. I'm sure it did for her mother," she assured him. "Those kinds of actions have even more meaning now as we go 'deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness'."

"Heart of darkness?" he raised an eyebrow.

"It's from a book. I never understood it until recently. The phrase comes to mind a lot these days."

"Sounds 'bout right."

While she explained, she realized she was on the floor across from him even though she didn't remember sitting down. Lost in thought with his memories, Daryl looked a lot younger than Lucy originally pinned for him. The stress made them all look older. She noticed a couple grey hairs herself that should not have grown in for at least another five to ten years.

"We're not going to kill you," she admitted, "As long as you don't do anything to us. We were planning on leaving in a couple days anyway. I'll make sure we cut you loose before we go."

"Any guns?"

"No can do. I'll leave some knives and food inside the cabin. Best I can do, okay?"

"All right," he agreed figuring his chances of survival were better with her than the man who nearly beat him to death.

His instincts told him that these people were not much different than his own group, normal people trying to survive. Rick might have handled the situation same as the man that interrogated him and a good man like Rick was pushed to do things he never would have done before the world went to hell. The woman seemed to want to let him go so he had to play that to his advantage he told himself.

Lucy murmured an apology for Sophia and then quickly left before he had a chance to say anything else. There wasn't much of a reason to trust him, but the story convinced her more or less that he didn't intend to harm them. She didn't understand why she felt the need to protect him when it was likely she had more to fear from him than the other way around.

When she entered the cabin, Dennis was pacing around with his hands balled up into fists and Annie was on the sofa crying into Nell's shoulder.

"What in the hell happened?" Dennis asked.

"Everything's fine. We came to an agreement. As long as he doesn't hurt anyone, I said we'll free him and leave some supplies when we leave."

"No way, we're not leavin' shit for him."

"He hasn't made any trouble for us so far and you beat him pretty bad."

"I don't give a shit 'bout him. My job is keeping our family safe."

"It doesn't seem like he's a bad guy. He told me he looked in the woods for a week when a kid in his group went missing."

"He's misleadin' ya cause he thinks you're weak. If he got the chance, he'd kill us all for tyin' him up like a damn dog."

"He's a normal guy, Dennis. I don't think he would," she muttered.

Dennis had a way of making her feel childish when she disagreed with him because he was a soldier and was already used to the darker nature of man. Lucy still held out hope that humanity wouldn't be destroyed even as civilized society was swept further away from their memory.

"Ya don't know him," Dennis continued, "And even if he's easy on the eyes, you can't be sure he ain't a monster already."

"It doesn't matter what I think. We're leaving the day after tomorrow. All we have to do is give him a knife to cut himself free and a box of cereal for the road and then my conscience will be clear. I'm not saying we have to take him drag him along with us."

"Better not be," he stared her down as he picked up his gun again and marched outside to take the first watch as usual.

"I'm sorry," Annie wailed.

"Baby girl, don't worry about it. Next time, you have to listen to us though. We're trying to keep us all safe and together."

"I didn't get us killed?"

"No, sweetie. It's fine," Lucy said as she wrapped her in a warm hug, "You know me and Dennis always take care of things."

"But you were fighting."

"That's how we figure out what to do. We disagree and find a good compromise."

After some coaxing from Lucy and Nell, Annie curled up in bed and went to sleep. Once Nell straightened up she crawled in next to Annie and Lucy took the couch again. Both of them had trouble falling asleep after the fight.

"You think he's a good man?" Nell whispered to her after a couple minutes.

"Yes, I do."

"Hope you're right."

Lucy managed to sleep a couple hours and then woke up around 3 a.m. to take over for Dennis. He was still annoyed with her, but was too tired to argue again and headed inside without saying anything.