More people began to filter in and the numbers at the prison rose. Daryl and Rick brought a bunch of people in who they had found on the streets or were hiding out in places they made runs to. Getting used to these new people was going to take some time. They were still adjusting to the prison life so for the most part they were leaving Daryl alone, not pestering him with too many personal questions. He thought it was because no one wanted to know about each other's stories anymore.

They were all the same, after all. Backstories that were plagued with death, loss, and pain.

Daryl made his way into the kitchen area with the smell of dinner wafting through the air. Beth had Judith in her arms when Daryl spotted her in the cafeteria. There were a number of people in there eating their dinner, talking with one another and intermingling with the original prison group members.

Daryl glanced over at Beth again. From the look of it, Beth had not eaten yet, making sure that Judith was fed first. The girl didn't know how to take a break.

Daryl crossed the length of the cafeteria and picked up a two bowls of whatever was being served for dinner. It looked like it was pasta with mixed vegetables, thanks to the garden that was growing outside from Hershel and Rick's hard work. Carol had been raving about her allegedly famous pasta sauce all week so he hoped it was going to live up to all the hype.

He weaved through the tables to the other side of the room where Beth was. She watched him walk over with a grin once she noticed that he was coming towards her with dinner.

"You need to eat," he told her, stretching out his arm to hand over the bowl he had gotten for her.

She gratefully accepted it. "I know, I know."

Patrick then slowly approached them with one hand attached onto his opposite arm, his shoulders caved inward, and this dorky looking expression on his face. He had to have been nervous about coming over to them or he was about to tell them he was going to pass out. From the look on his face, either one was plausible.

"You know, she's a beautiful little girl you got there," Patrick said to Beth while he smiled at Judith, who then stared back at Patrick with bewildered eyes.

Patrick was new here, only a few days had he been at the prison. As far as he knew, Patrick had never spoken to Beth.

"She is, isn't she?" Beth propped Judith up and turned her more towards Patrick.

"It's strange though," Patrick commented as he shook his head. He looked at both Beth and Daryl while he adjusted his glasses with one finger. "She doesn't look like either of you."

It was an innocent comment, one that made the entire room go dead silent. Daryl stopped chewing on the mouth full of food he had been wolfing down. He felt the eyes on him. Daryl moved his own eyes around the room without moving his head. All eyes were on him, waiting for a response. Were all these newer people thinking that Judith was Beth's and his? He doesn't ever remember anyone saying who Judith belonged to; all there had been was a massive influx of how gorgeous lil' ass-kicker was.

"Oh-h, um, she's not…ours. Or mine. Not Daryl's either. Judith is Rick's daughter," Beth corrected him, looking over at Daryl for a second before returning her eyes back to Patrick.

"Oh shit," Patrick cursed with his face going pale white. It shocked Daryl because Patrick didn't seem like the kind of guy who would curse out in the open. He immediately covered his mouth once he came to realize that there were little children in the room. "Sorry! I didn't-I didn't mean…I'm, uh, gonna go over there—" He motioned over to the door that was wide open—"I think I heard someone call my name."

Daryl had never seen a man run out of a room as fast as Patrick did, stumbling and everything. Looked like a damn chicken with his head cut off. But he was appreciative that Patrick had provided a new distraction and everyone turned their attention to him as he darted out of the room instead of keeping their eyes on Beth and him.

Beth adjusted Judith in her arms so she could take her fork and shovel in a huge bite of pasta. He felt like he stood there awkwardly, rendered speechless in what to say next. What the hell could he say now after that just happened? Daryl cleared his throat because the silence was deafening. He didn't see a way to defuse the uncomfortable tension in the air, and he was damn well sure that he was the only one in the room who felt it.

"Wait, what?" Daryl's not sure of the girl's name who said it. Was it Lisa? No, it must be Lizzie. She was one of the newest additions to the prison. "I thought they were together," she whispered to her little sister who was sitting next to her enjoying her dinner.

He's sure that one's name is Mika. All she did was shrug her shoulders and went back to eating.

Everyone went back to their conversations and with a quick glance over at Beth, it looked like she had remained unaffected by the incident with Patrick. She must not have heard what Lizzie had said; only Daryl had caught it. He would have thought that Beth would be too weirded out to even stand next to him after the remark Patrick had made. Apparently being mistaken for Judith's mother and him being the father did not bother her at all.

Should it?

He couldn't answer that question. He guessed he was the only one of the two who felt like he could bury his head into the fucking wall to get away.

—

Zach joined Daryl at the last minute after dinner to sweep the perimeter. This was something that Daryl would usually do by himself with only his crossbow with him, and was used to it being that way. He was not sure if he liked having another person there with him, actively trying to make small talk with him. Yes, even in the apocalypse it was still unbearable to Daryl. Still something that he dreaded as if it were some kind of disease. It wasn't easy for him to talk to people about himself, to open up when people were trying to get him to. He avoided that at all costs. Except with Beth, of course. Talking to her was simple. It came naturally. With anyone else it felt more forced and uncomfortable.

The sun was down and there was barely enough light to see where they were walking once Daryl and Zach started the perimeter sweep. It wouldn't have minded Daryl because he was used to hunting and tracking during nighttime. He could swear that he had some sort of night vision because he could easily maneuver in the darkness; a skill that he acquired after so many years of hunting in the woods. Zach, however, had been tripping over his own feet the second they stepped outside so Daryl went back in and got a flashlight for him. Ridiculous, he knew. But Zach was insistent on coming with him even if the threat of falling on his face was high.

Zach, for the most part, talked about random pieces of information: the weather, the walkers, and how he thought Carol and Beth made better dinners than his mother ever did. Daryl valued the humor that Zach managed to work into what he talked about. Sometimes he couldn't tell if Zach was joking or not, but that didn't really matter all that much.

He liked Zach up until the point where he started asking questions halfway through the sweep about what Daryl did in the past. Career? No. Daryl wasn't up for that kind of conversation. What was he supposed to say? Guess what, Zach, I didn't do shit because my brother was an asshole who I would listen to.

Yeah, that would go over real well. It's a good thing that Daryl shut him down before he continued guessing at what he did when Daryl refused to respond. Zach would never be able to correctly guess. It was a waste of time on his part and Daryl's.

"I liked you better when you weren't talkin'," he stated, moving his crossbow into his other hand.

"Not the first time I've heard that," Zach replied.

"I don't even wanna know who told you that before."

Zach sighed. "I'll tell you anyways. College girls, that's who."

There was a loud rustling around sound that came from beyond the fences and it captured both of their attention since it came from out of the blue, Zach being more startled by it than Daryl. The boy bumped into him as he retracted backwards away from the fence.

Zach quickly moved his flashlight from in front of him and shone the light through the metal fence over towards where the noise was coming from. "I don't see anything. What do you think is out there?"

Daryl walked closer to the fence and tried to listen more closely to the sound. Through all his hunting and tracking, he picked up on a few things. He had learned how to identify many aspects including sounds—what they meant, how large an animal was, how many there were, what direction it was moving in.

"Whatever it is, it's heavy. Reckon around forty pounds."

Zach continued to manipulate the light through the fence without any luck of spotting what was making the noise. "Maybe it's a raccoon."

Daryl turned away from the fence and threw Zach an 'are you fucking serious' kind of look. "A forty pound raccoon? The hell has it been eatin'?

Zach shrugged and tried to look around some more. "I went to New York City with my buddies once and I saw a rat the size of a house cat go down the street and into a storm drain. Scary shit. I wouldn't doubt anything."

"It ain't a threat. Probably some kind of animal. Walkers will scare it off," Daryl told Zach and motioned for them to continue walking the perimeter. There was no need to bother with what was beyond the fence.

"You know what's really funny?" Zach asked, looking over to Daryl. He didn't respond. All he wanted to do was get the sweep done with and go back inside. "I spent all that money on tuition, books, spent all that time studying only to end up without a degree and on the run from dead people. I should spent my time doing better things. You know, like going to concerts with friends and going to parties and doing dumb stuff that I'd regret later. Or telling that girl in my history class that she was smoking hot...and the girl in my human diversity class...and the one in Algebra."

Daryl snorted. Typical college boy this one was.

"I'm serious! If you could go back and get a do over, isn't there something you would have liked to do before? Something that you'd do in another way. Don't you think you'd live your life differently if you knew all this was going to happen before it did?"

Of course he would do things differently if he had the choice to go back. That was not the case though, so why bother to think it over?

"We're all different now," Daryl seriously told him. "We've all done things. Seen things. People aren't the same as they used to be. Never be the same again. No one could go back and start their life again, not their old life."

And wasn't that the truth.

Everyone was changed by this indefinitely. No one was the same person that they were a year ago, or two years ago, or even longer. No one was the same as they were yesterday. They were constantly changing, and not exactly for the better most of the time. The idea of having to re-enter society was more frightening than being surrounded by a herd of walkers with no escape. A normal society was where no one currently alive on the planet could function without going insane.

What did Zach expect him to say? That he could pick his life right back up where he left it and make some changes? Sure, if he could the first thing he would do would be to tell his brother off. After that, then what? It's not like he had a lot of options in his old life. He was a dumbass no good redneck with a combative attitude that couldn't care less about anything, who followed his brother's beck and call. He didn't want to even consider being the old him again.

"I guess that's true. We're all screwed up now."

Zach is quiet for a minute but Daryl can sense that there is something else that he wanted to say. "What is it?"

"I'm just…I'm thinking about my old life. Thinking about my sister," he admitted in a whisper-like voice. "I went out of state to school and never got to go back home when the outbreak happened. A group from school took off after the dead started walking around and I went with them without thinking. I don't know if my sister is alive or not. She's only two years younger than me. I think she could handle herself. The not knowing part is the worst. Keeps me up at night. I'm a horrible older brother. I feel like shit for not going back for her." Zach's voice turned unsteady. "I could have. I didn't. I chose not to and now I get to live with that."

Daryl didn't know how to respond. All along this guy had been consumed with guilt for not finding his sister, for not going back for her. Daryl had an idea of how that felt. Apart from the anger he felt when he learned that Merle was gone from that rooftop in Atlanta, there was that monstrous feeling of guilt that built up, telling him that it was his fault that Merle was gone.

The feeling went away over time and Daryl no longer blamed himself for that. He had gone after Merle and tried to find him. He came to realize that it was Merle's own fault that he was left there in the first place. There had been no point in letting that get to him.

Zach made a sound that sounded like half of a sigh and half of a laugh. "Sorry. I don't mean to dump my problems on you."

"S'fine. You needed to get it off your chest. I get that."

"I don't ever see the guilt going away. Or the thoughts of if she'd alive or…dead...or something else."

Daryl carefully chose his words. He tried to think of what Beth would say in this moment. "We've all made tough choices we ain't proud of. You never know. Maybe you'll see her again one day. Don't be makin' any assumptions 'bout what happened to her. Doesn't to anybody any good."

"Yeah," Zach smiled, thinking about the idea of that. It looked like that had brought him out of the sullen mood that talking about the guilt over his sister had put him in. "Maybe. Maybe I need to hang onto that."

Well, looked like that worked. He should do that more often, think about what Beth would say and then relay that to people. It seemed to work out really well in situations like this. He should get one of those 'What Would Jesus Do?' key chains and change it to 'What Would Beth Do?'. He almost laughed out loud at the thought. His mind went to strange places whenever he was sleep deprived. He desperately needed sleep and needed to convince himself that it was okay to take the opportunity to rest and recuperate after they were done with walking the perimeter.

As it turned out, the sweep of the prison perimeter went without a hitch. No breaches and nothing out of the ordinary. Daryl pulled out a cigarette from his back pocket and lite it. It was rare for him to have one of these, and in all actuality it should be a habit to break. He could literally hear Beth's voice in his head telling him that the cigarette was bad for him.

He could deal with that. It was better than Merle's voice. Much better.

"Hey, I've been wanting to ask you something ever since earlier today. It's stupid but I'm kind of curious."

Oh, God. Here they went again with another round of twenty questions. He was so looking forward to that. Couldn't Zach tell that he was jumping for joy at the possibility of being interrogated by an ex-college student?

Jeez, the kid needed to get some eye glasses or something before Daryl grabbed a roll of duck tape and taped Zach's mouth shut. Daryl wasn't in the mood to keep on evading inquires. He honestly doesn't even know why Zach is so interested in his life in the first place. He was the farthest thing from interesting. A rock would be more captivating than him.

Daryl breathed in and exhaled a mouth full of smoke in Zach's direction. He bitterly grumbled, "What do you wanna ask?"

"It's just one more, I swear! Then I'm done for the night."

Daryl was more than skeptical of that. One question always led to another. "Fine."

"So, you and Beth…you're not like dating or anything like that? I mean, I knew that Judith was Rick's, unlike Patrick, but I thought that maybe the two of you…"

Zach trailed off without finishing his sentence. That was not what he had been expecting Zach to ask about. Daryl gave him a quick glance before he brought the cigarette back up to his lips before he answered. "No."

Zach nodded his head, clearly liking his answer. It annoyed Daryl.

"So, is she dating anyone else?"

What? Did Zach think that Beth and him sat around and talked about their love lives during the walker apocalypse? Love lives which he is fairly certain are nonexistent for the both of them. At least he is one hundred percent sure that there was not one for him. And unless Beth had a secret boyfriend that she was hiding under her bed that no one seemed to have noticed, then she did not have anyone either.

Dating with dead people walking around trying to eat living flesh. Fucking unbelievable.

Who the fuck would have time to date when the world went to shit anyways? He's pretty damn sure that dinner and movie dates were out of the question. It was more like smash in walker heads and find survival supplies and try not to get killed kind of dates, if that word was even appropriate to use.

"You'd have to ask her," Daryl coldly responded. He didn't like where this was going.

"I just figured you would know since you two spend so much time together. Or at least that's what I've seen in the time I've been here."

He felt the need to defend himself. "Not that much time. We're all busy."

"Okay. I was just curious, is all. I mean, she's obviously beautiful. Who wouldn't want to be around her? She's around my age. I get that it's dumb to think about stuff like this, given the condition of the world. You seem to know her pretty well so do you think she'd be interested? It doesn't seem like she has a lot of time but it might be worth a shot."

Daryl clenched his teeth together at that last part. The thought of Zach going after Beth made his stomach turn sour.

"M'not her spokesperson," he spat out.

"Right. I should man up and ask her myself."

A few awkward beats passed that consisted of them standing there in silence. Daryl didn't say anything more out of fear that the next thing to leave his mouth would be something that he would regret. Zach went back to gazing over at the fences with his flashlight, which annoyed him. Everything about his guy annoyed him beyond belief all of a sudden. Even his fucking breathing irritated him.

Daryl stared Zach down for a second before he left Zach standing there, not telling him where he was going off to. He figured that Zach would catch the drift that they were done with the sweep and there was no need to linger around. It's not like Daryl needed to hold Zach's hand for him to get back inside. There was nothing left to talk about; he didn't want to hear anything more anyways.

What Zach had said evoked this strange and foreign emotion for Daryl. Truthfully, it was almost embarrassing of himself that he had to deal with his. His cigarette wouldn't help at all so he chucked it onto the ground and put it out so it didn't catch any shit on fire. That's all he would need—to burn the fucking cucumbers.

Get a grip.

Daryl tried to shove the feelings back down but he couldn't. It was too late. They boiled up and spilled over completely to the point where it was out of his control. The feeling was strong, clawing at him from the inside.

Wait a minute.

Was he jealous? No. No fucking way was Daryl Dixon jealous. It was not possible. Still, the feeling resonated inside of him. He decided to take it out on the walkers by the fence.

Daryl stooped down and grabbed one of the long rods that were leaned up against the prison wall and headed down to the fence where a group of walkers had gathered, their noise becoming increasingly loud as he got closer. He wasted no time getting to work. One by one, the walkers fell to the ground into a pile. He plunged the rod into each one of their heads over and over again. The action was automatic now, repeated and brutal. He put a lot of force into it, way more than was necessary. So much that the rod went entirely though the heads and out the back before it was yanked back though.

He was worked up about what Zach had asked him. He didn't want to think about why it caused him to turn angry and frustrated. As long as he kept smashing in walker's heads then he wouldn't need to think.

By the time he was done, Daryl was out of breath from not stopping. There were countless bodies littering the ground on the other side of the fence. It was so dark that he couldn't tell how many there were, and he could not remember how many times he sunk the rod into their heads.

Daryl was covered in blood, head to toe. It was everywhere. He let the bloody rod drop to the ground as he took a couple steps back away from the now quite area.

Shit.

What was wrong with him? This wasn't like him. He went on a walker killing rampage over something that Zach asked about Beth, and then something that he was implying on asking her later.

Daryl really wished he had another cigarette.