"I think you should check it out," Maggie said, standing on Daryl's front porch. Maggie and Glenn had gone out on a run right after an early breakfast and they had come back just as the group was finishing up lunch. Daryl had excused himself to take a quick nap on his couch, something he'd been looking forward to since he got out of bed. Judith had apparently randomly decided that she was entirely against sleeping, though she'd been sleeping through the night for some time. Her rebellion had kept Hope awake, against her will, most of the night and had roused most of the household.
Now his nap was being interrupted by Maggie, concerned about signs of others in the area that she and Glenn had run across. They were close by, Maggie had said, because she and Glenn had seen evidence of a fresh fire, and it hadn't been a half a mile from their camp. Then they'd seen another fire, not so fresh, some little distance from that. The group, however large or small it was, was moving in the direction of their community and she wanted Daryl to check it out.
"Fine," Daryl said, stretching and scratching the back of his head. "I'll go an' check it out."
Everyone else in his house was sleeping except Carol. Tyreese was napping on a pallet on the floor with both the girls. Michonne had retired to the bed upstairs. He envied them a little while he got his shoes on and grabbed up his crossbow.
"You seen Beau?" Daryl called to Carol as he was walking down the sidewalk, she was coming toward him, probably planning on joining the others in a midday coma.
"I saw him at lunch, but he left with Carl," Carol said. "Where are you going?"
"Got some people in the area, gonna go an' see if I can't find 'em an' check 'em out," Daryl said, yawning. "Gonna take Beau with me."
"Try over there where he's been practicing with Carl," Carol said. "I'm going to see if I can't get a few minutes of sleep, I'm dying."
"Yeah, everybody else is already dead," Daryl said, momentarily bitter again about his disturbed nap plans.
Daryl turned his steps and found Beau where Carol had predicted, working with Carl and his bow. Daryl watched them a moment. Carl was getting better. In the time that Daryl watched them he hit the target Beau had set up for him three times out of the five that he shot at it. They weren't bulls-eyes, but it was a vast improvement over when he was missing it entirely.
"Beau," Daryl said, finally interrupting them, "I need you to come with me, we got somethin' we gotta go do."
"Can I come?" Carl asked, turning with Beau at Daryl's summons.
"No, Carl, you can't come just yet. We gotta go check out some new people in the area and we don't know what we gon' run up on," Daryl said. "It'd be better if you stayed here. I don't wanna take no more people than we have to."
Daryl hadn't gone in search of a group before, but he thought that a larger number of people would be more alarming. If he took too many of the others with him, then the group, even if they were peaceful may feel threatened and feel they need to protect themselves against an imagined threat. He and Beau would go alone. The boy was quick on his feet, and he had the same general nature of a Golden Retriever. He didn't seem like a threat at all, which would be good when approaching strangers, but Daryl also assumed that for him to make it on his own as he had, the boy would probably be good in a tight spot.
Beau went for his weapons and then tagged along behind Daryl to Glenn's house where Daryl got directions to the general area where they had seen the fire. He decided they go on foot. They'd be more likely to find the apparently wandering group if they were searching the area on foot.
"How many you reckon we gon' find?" Beau asked when they were walking outside the gates in the general direction of the fire that Maggie and Glenn had spotted.
"How am I s'posed to know?" Daryl responded.
"You reckon they gon' be nice or you reckon they gon' be some 'a the rough'ns that I seen on the road?" Beau questioned.
"I don't know," Daryl said, irritated with the chit chat and his lack of sleep. "Shut up, we don't want 'em to know we're comin' because your voice carries over half 'a Georgia," he said, lowering his own voice in demonstration.
Beau kept quiet then.
"Look for tracks, let me know if you see anything," Daryl said.
Daryl was, himself, a very good tracker, but he'd also learned while hunting that Beau certainly lacked no skills where tracking was concerned.
They found the remnants of the fire, obviously burned that morning, without much difficulty.
"They went thata way," Beau said, pointing toward a small, slightly wooded area.
Daryl nodded, seeing the same prints that Beau saw. "Yeah, let's go," he said. Beau kept in step with him and they slipped into the overgrown brush, ducking a few tree limbs as they went.
At first Daryl thought that it was worthless. It was clear that the group that had passed through here had either been a very small group or they'd been walking single file. It wasn't hard to track them, seeing as the area was quite overgrown and the people who had passed had made no effort to conceal their passage.
He wasn't sure, for a moment, why he and Beau were slipping through the weeds and unruly trees in search of these people. Maybe they would show up at their community, or maybe they wouldn't, but now he felt like he was hunting them down. It was like they were some sort of game, and Daryl wasn't sure what they'd do with them when they found them. If they found them and they weren't friendly, they'd have to kill them, if they found them and they were friendly, they'd be stuck making an impromptu decision about inviting them back to the community.
The invitation to bring them back to the community wasn't really what was worrying Daryl. Granted he had some qualms about bringing in too many people, and it seemed momentarily odd to him that he could currently be hunting more people to bring back, but that wasn't nearly as problematic as the other thought that fleeted across his mind.
If these people, the hunted, weren't friendly, they'd have to kill them. That was the law of the land these days, but what troubled Daryl is that if that happened, he could no longer rationalize it as they had before. He couldn't say that they'd encountered these individuals by chance, that they'd threatened them, and that they'd had to execute them because of the danger they posed. Now he was actually hunting them. He would have searched them out to judge them and to execute them.
Suddenly this was a role that he no longer felt comfortable with. He decided it was best for him and Beau to return to the community. They knew someone was in the area, which was fair enough. They'd wait for them to come calling at the gates for admission into their space before they judged them. He wasn't going to be someone that encroached in another's space just to eliminate them. He wasn't comfortable with that role.
Daryl was just about to suggest to Beau that they turn back when he saw a woman, alone, in front of him, her back to him. He couldn't tell what she was doing. Perhaps she was picking berries, or maybe she was crouched down and watching something in the brush.
It was too late now. If they turned to walk away, they would undoubtedly startle the woman and they would have to confront her. Daryl didn't know if she was alone or not, but it looked like she was, and he wasn't comfortable with simply leaving one woman alone out here. He was smart enough, though, not to assume that just because she was a woman she clearly held no threat. He quietly reached his hand out, pressing the palm against Beau's chest and pushing the boy slightly back. Beau reacted as though he understood that Daryl was signaling him to remain silent and get back unless he was needed. Daryl held his crossbow down at his side, but kept it ready to use in case the woman should prove to be a threat.
"We don't mean no harm," Daryl said, announcing his presence.
The woman didn't stir. She remained crouched in her position, looking straight in front of her.
"You alone?" Daryl asked, wondering why the woman hadn't even turned to examine the men that were walking up behind her. "We ain't gon' hurt you less'n you give us a reason to."
The woman didn't stir. Daryl stopped a minute, confused. You didn't just ignore people around you. How did she know he was even being honest about the fact that they meant no harm? He could very well be walking up to cut her throat and she would be no more aware of it than a man in the moon.
"Hey, did you hear me?" Daryl called, walking a little closer to the back of the woman.
When she didn't stir again, Daryl began to get worried. He could really see nothing of the woman except her back, the back of her legs, and her curly hair cascading down her back, tied back with a piece of cloth. Maybe she was injured, or something else was wrong with her. Maybe she'd eaten something bad and was having some kind of poisoning episode. What was clear, though, was that she wasn't responding at all to Daryl's presence only a few steps behind her.
Daryl stepped forward again, reaching out and touching the woman carefully on the shoulder. At the brushing of his fingertips she suddenly swung around and into a standing position, and Daryl found a knife pointed straight at him. In an almost simultaneous reaction, Daryl had raised his crossbow, misjudging the distance between them. The arrow already loaded into the crossbow made contact with the woman, raking across her as he swung and pushing her back, howling.
The woman had dropped her knife and was clutching at her chest. Daryl swung his crossbow over his shoulder, immediately knowing that she had not been a threat to him, he'd merely startled her, but he had been a threat to her, although accidentally. It was obvious she was bleeding, her hands wet with her own blood, and it was obvious that she was panicking too.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Daryl clamored. "I swear I didn't mean to do it," he said. He wasn't sure what to do. The woman's cries sounded strange to him. He wanted to shut her up, though, scared that the cries would draw more Walkers than he wanted to deal with, and the fact that she was bleeding wouldn't keep them from finding them before too long anyway. He'd been the reason she was injured, and he wasn't willing to let her be eaten by Walkers because of it. As he moved toward her, though, she back up, understandably so. "I swear I didn't mean to hurt ya, I ain't gonna hurt ya no more," Daryl said. "You gotta be quiet an' I'll get you to someone who can help ya." He didn't know how serious it had been, he imagined that it may have been a little deep, but nothing life threatening if he could get her to calm down and let him help her. She wasn't responding to him, though, other than fighting to try to get away from him.
Daryl finally lunged at the woman, grabbing her, attempting to avoid catching her wound. He wrapped his hand around her mouth, pulling her back against his chest and held her until she stopped fighting.
"I ain't gon' hurt you no more," he said. "I didn't mean to hurt ya in the first place. I'm gonna get'cha patched up but you screamin' like a stuck pig ain't gonna get us outta here safe an' sound, you understand?"
In response she bit him on the hand, hard.
"Damn it!" He cursed, not moving his hand from her mouth for fear that she'd start screaming again. "What the fuck you go an' bite me for, I done told ya I ain't gon' hurt ya no more!"
Suddenly, from the direction that the woman had been looking, a man came bounding out of the thick trees and undergrowth.
"Don't hurt, please don't hurt her!" He called.
Beau, seeing that Daryl had his hands full with the struggling woman, yanked his tomahawk out of his belt and held it, prepared to defend Daryl from the approaching man. The man, though he wore a knife at his side, made no move for his knife.
As he came closer he held his hands up, he was carrying a large bag thrown across his shoulders.
"Please," he said. "I don't have much, but I'll give you whatever you want, just let her go."
It must have been that moment that he noticed the blood. He gasped.
"Oh my God, what did you do to her?" He made a move toward Daryl and the woman, Daryl's hand still muffling her cries. Beau matched him step by step and moved between them.
"I didn't mean to hurt her," Daryl said, "honest. I got someone that can patch her up. She drew her knife on me first, and sorta got in the way when I drew my crossbow at her. The arrow got her, but I don't know how bad, she won't stop makin' these God awful noises so I can see how bad she's hurt."
"Can you call off your assassin?" The man asked, his hands still in the air, eyeing Beau. "I'm not going to hurt anyone, all I want is Sadie. We don't have much, but I'll give you what we have."
Daryl could see the man was wide eyed. He didn't know anything about the man, nor about the woman that was struggling against him, not realizing that she was probably only causing herself more pain, not to mention more blood loss. The fact that they weren't surrounded by Walkers with the blood and the noise more than surprised Daryl. He kept casting glances from side to side, trying to listen over her muffled cries for the growling of approaching predators. He imagined for a moment what he would have felt if he'd come upon a similar scene and some strange man was holding Michonne, bleeding, in a similar manner. The fact that he man wasn't attempting to draw a weapon in any way clearly showed that truly his only interest in the moment lie in getting back the woman that had nearly chewed Daryl's hand in half from the feeling of it.
"Ease up, Beau," Daryl said. Beau responded by lowering his tomahawk and backing to stand beside Daryl, but it was clear the boy was still on alert.
"You gotta keep her quiet," Daryl said.
The man nodded, slowly reaching toward the woman. Daryl released her and she flew into the arms of the man. He pushed her out at arm's length.
"It's OK," he said. "You've got to be as quiet as you can. He says he can help you."
"Help me?" She asked.
Daryl thought her voice was strange. He could understand her, but she didn't speak like anyone that he'd heard talk before.
"Yes, he's going to help you," the man said.
"You alone?" Beau asked. "You ain't got no group?"
"No," the man responded. "We had a group, but not anymore. Now it's just Sadie and me."
"You can come with us then, I reckon," Beau said. "We'll get her patched up and you can stay with our group."
Daryl looked at Beau. Who did the kid think he was making invitations to stay? He'd get Carol to help the woman, since her injury was clearly his fault and he owed her that much at least, but he hadn't decided on inviting them to remain with the group.
Beau, however, had already considered the situation. They had said less than five people, and one woman and one man alone was clearly less than five people. For him it was settled. Sadie and her companion would join their group.
Daryl watched as the man dug in his bag, ripping up some clothes that he had in there and wrapping them around Sadie's torso. She pulled away from him and he pulled her face toward him.
"I know it hurts, but it's going to help with the bleeding," he said.
Daryl thought that he was clearly no doctor. He wasn't binding the wound well at all.
"Let me help," Daryl said, stepping forward. Sadie shied away from him. "I said I was sorry, ain't no need to be so skittish," Daryl said, reaching for another garment from the bag. He folded it up. "You need to put this directly over the wound, then tie your binding as tight as you can get it. It'll hold 'til we can get her back to our community and get Carol to take a look at it."
The man accepted the suggestion, reassuring Sadie from time to time of what he was doing.
When they started back toward camp, Beau and Daryl leading the way with the man behind them, his arm around Sadie, Daryl thought they could finally speak.
"My name's Daryl, and this is Beau," Daryl offered, hoping to gain the name of the man.
"I'm Mark, and you've met Sadie," Mark responded.
"I'm awful sorry, Sadie, but you drawed your knife on me an' I responded. I gotta be careful these days too, you know. If you'd been payin' attention then I wouldn'ta surprised ya. I tried to tell ya we didn't mean no harm," Daryl said.
"I left her there so she'd be safe while I was looking for food," the man said. "I told her she'd be safe there. Did you come up behind her?"
"Yeah," Daryl said. Sadie hadn't responded to him and he figured that she wasn't ready to forgive him just yet. "I told her that we didn't mean no harm, but she was daydreamin' or somethin'. When I touched her to get her attention she pulled her knife on me."
"She's deaf," Mark said.
"Deaf?" Daryl asked.
"Yeah, that means she can't hear," Mark said, clearly questioning Daryl's intelligence.
"I know what deaf means," Daryl said. He had never met a deaf person before. He'd had an uncle when he was a child that had been hard of hearing, or at least pretended to be, and everyone had said he was deaf, but it was clear that he really wasn't. "How come she ain't been got by Walkers by now?" Daryl asked. To him it seemed that if you couldn't hear at all these days, you were probably not likely to survive. If Sadie couldn't hear him and Beau approaching, how would she have protected herself if they'd been a couple of hungry Walkers instead of just two people hunting down the living in a thicket near their community? Daryl shuttered a little at the thought. He'd hunted her down. He'd tracked her, frightened her, and injured her for no reason at all. The least he could do now was try to make sure that she healed.
"Walkers?" Mark asked.
"Walkers, the dead people walkin' 'round," Daryl responded.
Suddenly Sadie made a noise behind him. Almost as if on cue, a Walker rambled toward them. Beau, who was still clutching his tomahawk from having drawn it earlier, quickly took down the Walker. "You know, like that nasty asshole."
"She can smell them," Mark responded. "They can't sneak up on her, but you don't smell like they do so she didn't pick up on your scent."
"What the hell is she? A bloodhound?" Daryl asked.
"Of sorts," Mark responded.
When they got to the gate of the community, Maggie and Beth were on watch. "Go get Carol," Daryl said, taking out the four Walkers that were showing interest in Maggie and Beth and passing through the gates.
Beth trotted off and returned a moment later with Carol who looked puzzled at the scene before her. Daryl gently grabbed Sadie by the arm before she could protest and thrust her towards Carol a little.
"I accidentally hurt her," Daryl said. "You reckon you could fix her up?"
Carol wrinkled her brow.
"I can try," she said. "Maggie, can you help me? I'll take her into headquarters and have a look at her."
Carol started to walk off. "I'm Carol," she called back to Sadie, who stood frozen, watching Carol and Maggie walk toward the house.
Mark tapped Sadie on the shoulder.
"Go with them, they're going to help you," he said. Sadie wrinkled her forehead for a moment, then nodded and started after them.
"If she can't hear you then why do you talk to her?" Daryl asked.
"She can read lips," Mark responded. "As long as you're looking at her when you talk she knows what you're saying."
Daryl nodded his understanding.
"Beau, you can go on back to what you was doin'. I reckon we've done all the damage we need to do for the day," Daryl said. Beau didn't say anything, just jogged off down the street. "Come on, Mark, we'll go inside an' wait for 'em to finish patchin' up your girl."
When they got in headquarters it sounded like all Hell had broken loose. Sadie was screaming, Carol was yelling, Maggie was yelling, and there was a good deal of crashing.
"You need some help in there?" Daryl called.
"Yes we do," Carol called back. "She's exposed, but I'm going to have to have a man in here to hold her down. She's fighting like Hell and she's stronger than she looks."
Daryl laughed a little, looking at his own hand which bore a few places where her teeth had broken the skin.
"We might need both of you," Carol said. "I'm just trying to clean it up and she's going to need stitches. I need her still if I'm going to do this as good as possible with as little trauma to her as possible."
Daryl followed Mark into the already crowded kitchen. He tried to avert his eyes as a topless Sadie, sitting on the table, was locked into a wrestling match against Maggie.
"Beth," Carol commanded, "go see if you can find some sort of sedative in the medicine boxes in storage. I'm going to need bandages, too."
Beth gladly left the scene.
Mark explained to Sadie that they had to clean the wound and stitch it up and that he and Daryl were going to hold her, just so she'd stay still until Carol was done. Daryl took his position holding one of her shoulders down, trying to focus on her eyes and not the fact that she was fully exposed and he and Mark were pinning her to a table. He felt bad, pretty sure that this had not been how she'd imagined her day going, and it was his fault.
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When Carol had finally finished with the woman, the sedative that Beth had given her had clearly kicked in. Daryl and Mark had to switch from holding her down to holding her up so that Carol could properly bandage her. Beth had brought her some clean clothes, and Carol dressed her almost like a rag doll.
"Maggie's prepared you a house to stay in," Carol said. "You're welcome to customize it however you like, but at least it's a place for her to rest right now."
"Thank you," Mark said. "I appreciate you helping her, and I know she appreciates it too."
"She'll appreciate it a lot more when the trauma of some woman she doesn't know yanking off her shirt and sewing her up with a needle and thread wears off," Carol said, smiling.
"You need some help?" Daryl asked. Mark looked to be about Daryl's age, but he didn't look very strong, and Daryl doubted he'd be able to carry the unresponsive Sadie all the way to the house that Maggie had prepared, which was a good piece down the street.
"I could probably use it," Mark admitted.
Daryl heaved the woman up. She may have been stronger than she looked, but she was also heavier. Carrying her down the sidewalk he encountered Michonne, walking toward them with Hope.
"What in the world?" She asked, obviously surprised to see her husband carrying an apparently lifeless female down the street while a man she didn't know followed closely behind him.
"It's a long story, 'Chonne," Daryl grunted. Michonne followed behind to the house, and watched as he struggled to get up the porch stairs with the woman. Mark rushed ahead to open the door and Daryl slipped inside, Michonne just behind him. He accidentally hit Sadie against the doorframe and cursed. She stirred.
"Careful, Daryl," Michonne said.
"I reckon she'd be thankful if that was the worst that happened to her today," Daryl said. Michonne still wasn't sure what had happened, but her interest was piqued.
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"Sadie's about the kindest person you'll ever meet," Mark said over dinner.
Sadie was still knocked out, and Carol wasn't surprised. She was pretty sure she might have overdosed her a little on the sedatives. To be the kindest person in the world, she'd been a little like a caged tiger in the kitchen, and Carol had thought the only way to get out of the situation without becoming injured was to knock her out as completely as possible, momentarily having considered allowing Maggie to clock her with something.
"She sure seems sweet," Carol said. Daryl snickered at the tone in Carol's voice.
"Oh she's got a lot of fire in her too," Mark said, "but unprovoked she really is kind."
"She your woman?" Beau asked. They looked to be about the same age, and Mark was obviously worried about her, so Beau figured that there might be something between them. She was very pretty, so he wouldn't blame Mark if he'd laid claim to her.
"No," Mark said. "She's not my type."
Laughter rumbled a little through the crowd.
"Look around," Jimmy said, "it's the end of the world. Types don't really go for much around these parts anymore."
Mark chuckled a little and stabbed at his food. "Yeah, I guess not," he said, "but she's really not my type."
Michonne understood the emphasis immediately, but was sure that most of the individuals that comprised her group wouldn't pick up on it. It didn't matter anyway.
"So you said you had a group, but you ain't got no group now, how'd you end up together without no one?" Daryl asked.
Daryl was relieved that at least Mark had accepted his apology, and he hoped that when Sadie was back to normal she'd accept it as well. He'd had second thoughts about letting them stay. In his opinion the deaf woman was probably just Walker food, but the more he thought about it, the more he fashioned that thought into a reason for letting them stay. She might not make it when they moved on, but they could prolong her life at least by a while letting her stay there. It might make up for the damage he'd done today.
"Well, we didn't start out together," Mark said. "I was with my partner and a few of our friends when we started out of Atlanta. We ran up with another group and we all started trying to work together to survive. Sadie showed up sometime later with her brother, having lost her husband and children along the way. Our group had a camp not too terribly far from here. It got hit one day while I was out trying to scavenge food, and when I got back several of the men were dead, Sadie's brother included, and most of the women were worse for the wear."
"I bet those were the guys we killed," Maggie said suddenly.
"What?" Mark asked.
"We ran up on some drifters that were talking about killing the men off in a camp and having their way with the women," Maggie explained. "Glenn and I killed them."
"Could have been the same ones, I don't know. Sadie would be better at describing them. I didn't see them, but she got more than a good look at them," he said, his voice dropping a little.
Glenn hadn't seen this Sadie person yet, but he felt sorry for her. He felt, for a moment, a little better about having killed the men. If this Sadie was as kind as Mark was describing her to be, then at least he felt better knowing that he had killed the men that would take advantage of her, and kill her brother. Maybe there had been some justice served in the hardware store when he'd decided that these men didn't look like the kind of men that needed to stay around any longer.
"So then how'd it end up bein' just the two of ya?" Daryl asked.
"I guess it was about two weeks ago I went out looking for food again, and when I got back everyone was gone, except Sadie. She said another bunch of men had come through, apparently with the same ideas as the first, except that when they'd had their fun they'd taken everyone, all the women and children, except they'd left her behind. I guess they thought she wasn't worth taking."
"Walker food," Daryl said. He suddenly realized that he'd said it out loud, only really meaning to think it.
Mark nodded his head a little. "Yeah," he said, "I guess they thought she was Walker food."
"I'm sorry," Daryl said. "I didn't mean to say that."
"It's OK," Mark said, "just don't let Sadie know you think that. She's got a lot of spirit, and she's probably likely to outlive me in all this. I don't want people's negativity getting the best of her."
"That explains the old bruises, then," Carol said. She'd noticed the green tinted bruises on the woman's body when she'd been working on the gash that Daryl that given her. Carol knew what old bruises looked like, and she knew that those had not been the result of Sadie's encounter with Daryl.
"Anyway," Mark said, "when I saw that they were gone, I knew that it was just Sadie and me left. I didn't want to go in search of the others because I didn't want to put Sadie at more risk. Even though she's quite the…Walker killer, I guess…I didn't want her fighting against a band of men who had violated her, beaten her, and left her for dead. They'd probably shoot her just to be done with her. I knew I couldn't handle them alone either, so since then we've just been trying to avoid them and live the best we can."
"So do you know where they are?" Rick asked suddenly. He shot a look at Daryl and Daryl could tell that he was concerned. If this band felt it was fine to descend upon a camp, mistreat the women, and then take the people they wanted, there was no doubt they'd do it again, given the chance.
"Honestly I don't," Mark said. "I don't want to know where they are, as long as they're far away from me and from Sadie."
Daryl sat back in his chair, considering the possibilities. The band was probably close by, otherwise it might have been difficult for them to move the women and children without having caught Mark's attention, wherever he had been at the time. They were going to have to be on guard, even more so than before, in case these people decided to show up in their own backyard. If they did come, though, they were going to get more than they bargained for. This was a group that he wouldn't have to think about. If they came, they'd be met with no mercy. He intended to call a meeting soon and let that be well known to everyone in the community.
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"I hurt that woman for no reason, 'Chonne," Daryl said.
Michonne sighed. She was exhausted, Daryl was exhausted, Judith was protesting bedtime again, Hope was sitting in the bed with them playing instead of sleeping, she could hear Carol desperately trying to get Judith to calm down and go to sleep, trying not to get frustrated with the little girl who had suddenly decided that sleep was unnecessary…she really didn't feel that much like dealing with Daryl's frustrations, but it was something that had to be done if she was going to get any rest at all.
"Daryl, it was an accident," Michonne said. "She's going to be fine, Carol said so. No one is going to hold it against you. Give her a couple of weeks of being here, feeling sheltered for a change, and she'll be thanking you for it instead of being angry about it."
"We went huntin' 'em down, 'Chonne. At first I thought they might be bad, you know, like that group that Mark was talkin' 'bout, and I don't know what I was gonna do, I guess I wanted to get them 'fore they got here to us, but they weren't bad, 'Chonne, and then I go an' do that to her," Daryl said.
"You were trying to protect us, Daryl, all of us. You were going to try to access the threat and handle it if you could. There's nothing wrong with that. That's thinking ahead in the world we live in. It just so happens that you ran into them, and it's a good thing you did. How much longer do you think they would have lasted out there on their own? Mark doesn't look like he could hold his own for too long in combat and Sadie has some pretty obvious setbacks when it comes down to it. In a way, you did them a favor. It would have been better if you could have done it without accidentally giving her a three inch gash, but accidents do happen," Michonne said.
"I shouldn'ta called her Walker food," Daryl said.
Michonne chuckled. "No, Daryl, you shouldn't have called her Walker food, although I think that the thought had crossed most of our minds before you even said it."
"Did you really think that too, 'Chonne?" Daryl asked. He was lying on his back and Hope had a sudden interest to crawl on him. He played with her a little, smiling when she lost her footing and dropped back onto the mattress, apparently trying to decide if she was bothered by it or not.
"I did, Daryl, at least to some degree. I mean it is survival of the fittest out there, and I don't know what kind of challenge it would be like to not be able to hear anything, but I can't imagine it would be an advantage," Michonne said.
Judith was quiet now. It sounded like Carol and Tyreese had retired to bed. Michonne wanted to go to sleep, but she didn't want to take Hope in there to her crib and risk waking Judith. She decided that Hope could spend the night with them tonight, and hopefully Judith would understand tomorrow night that bedtime wasn't suddenly a punishment.
"Let's try to get some sleep, Daryl. Stop worrying about today. You can't take it back, and you can apologize to her again tomorrow," Michonne said.
She kissed Daryl and rolled over.
"OK, 'Chonne, but Hope ain't sleepy yet," Daryl said.
"Well she can keep you company while you keep worrying," Michonne said. "I'm sure you'll be at it for a little while. Maybe you can worry her to sleep."
"Very funny, 'Chonne," Daryl said. Hope cooed at him and lunged forward, sticking her fingers in his mouth.
"Goodnight you two, I love you both," Michonne said, not turning back toward them.
"Night, 'Chonne," Daryl said. "I love you too."
Daryl was quiet for a minute. Michonne closed her eyes and started to become overcome with sleep, only vaguely aware of what was taking place next to her on the bed.
"Guess it's just you an' me, kid," Daryl said. It was the last thing that Michonne heard before she fell asleep.