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Rick was dropped like a log by the appearance of his baby and the evidence that her mother hadn't survived. Daryl tried to bring him back to life, calling his name, waving his hand in front of his face, but there was no response, so the rest of them crowded around the baby, looking her over. Feeding her seemed like the first task to Daryl, so he took Maggie with him and they went on a run for baby supplies.
Before he left, he gave orders to the others—clear the fence of the Walkers crowding around it, take care of Carl, who had been through so much today. It surprised him how natural it felt to be taking the lead.
He and Maggie returned in the dark. Everything worked like clockwork as they approached—Glenn covered them from the watchtower, taking out Walkers near them, as Axel and Oscar opened the gate exactly on their approach.
Inside the prison, the baby was crying in Carl's arms. Daryl reached for her instinctively. When had he last held a baby? Had he ever? He had no idea. But it felt right, and she quieted some as he held her against his chest. He took the bottle of formula from Beth and held it to the baby's lips. Silence fell, broken only by the sounds of the baby sucking on the bottle.
Everyone watched. A baby, drinking from a bottle. It was the most normal, most precious, most lovely thing that had happened in a very long time.
Daryl looked down at Carl. "She got a name yet?"
"Not yet, but … I was thinkin', maybe Sophia. There's Carol, too. And … Andrea. Amy. Jackie. Patricia." He paused, then muttered the last name almost under his breath. "Lori." Then he said it again, louder, shaking his head. "I don't know."
Listening to this kid list off the names of all the women they'd lost was damned depressing. Daryl didn't think any baby should be saddled with the name of the dead.
He looked down at the baby, contentedly sucking on the bottle. "Yeah," he said softly to her. "You like that? Huh? Lil Ass-kicker?" He looked around at the others, smiling. "Right? That's a good name, right?"
They all laughed watery laughs. Carl's litany of names had gotten to them, too.
He didn't sleep that night. Closing his eyes in the darkness, he knew what he would see, and he didn't want to. Instead, he stayed up and helped with the baby as she woke hungry every couple of hours.
In the morning light, Daryl went out to the yard, where the graves had been dug. T-Dog's and Lori's were waiting for the bodies to be brought out, but Carol's was just a cross. From his pocket, Daryl took a fake flower he had picked up on the run yesterday, and gently he laid it in front of the cross, touching one arm of the wood as though she was there, as though she could feel the way he missed her, like part of himself was gone, too.
And then he turned his back on the empty place that was all that was left of her, and went back to care for the others.
Carol was exhausted, and dehydrated, and frightened. She wanted to sleep, but she was afraid if she did, she would never wake up. She was safe here, in this solitary cell. All the sounds of Walkers outside were gone. If she wanted, she could stand up and open the door and walk out of here. But she couldn't seem to make herself move. Feebly, she pushed at the door.
Daryl and Oscar went down to the lower levels, wanting to clear out whatever Walkers were left down there. Carl insisted on coming, too.
As they moved through, checking out the solitary rooms, making sure they had cleared out the whole level, Daryl was reminded by Carl's silent suffering of a story he had never told much. But he told it now, to let Carl know he wasn't alone. The story of the day he was playing outside and the fire engines came by, because his mom had gotten drunk on wine and burned herself up in bed, smoking.
What he didn't want to admit, even to himself, was that the story was as much about wanting desperately to find what was left of Carol and put her to rest as it was about helping Carl through his grief.
"I shot my mom," Carl told him. "She was out, hadn't turned yet. I ended it. It was real. Sorry about your mom," he added.
Tough kid. This world, you had to get tough or you went under. "I'm sorry about yours," Daryl said, meaning it. No kid should have to grow up without a mama, and Little Ass-Kicker up there shouldn't have had to lose hers in order to be born.
Carol could hear voices outside her cell. Couldn't she? She thought she could. Daryl's voice. She tried to call out for him, but she couldn't make a sound. She tried to bang on the door, or move something to make a noise, but she was so weak, so faint with hunger and weariness that all she could manage to do was keep pushing at the door, feebly.
Someone, or something, pushed it back at her, and the voices moved past.
Had they been voices? Or had she been imagining them? It was so hard to tell.
In an empty cell, Oscar found a pair of soft warm men's slippers, pouncing on them. What a man needed slippers for in this world, Daryl didn't know, but to each their own, he figured.
Behind him, he heard the telltale growl of a Walker, startling him. As one, he and Oscar aimed and fired, and the Walker went down with two bullets and an arrow in its head.
Something else was there, too. In the Walker's neck. A knife. Daryl knelt and pulled it out. "That's Carol's knife." He had given it to her himself. He had taught her how to use it, how to defend herself. And she had. She'd fought back. Had this been the bastard that got her? Was this Walker the reason she was gone?
And if so, was what was left of her still down here? Daryl had to know.