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The prison was no longer the haven it had once been. If Hershel had been in charge, they would already have left, already gone looking for safety elsewhere. But Rick worried about the safety of his children on the run more than in the prison, and Glenn—Glenn wanted to make a home, to make a stand, to prove something. Maybe to Maggie, maybe to Hershel … maybe to himself.

So Hershel waited for the inevitable, wishing he hadn't lived to see the end of the world. Wishing he wasn't so sure his world, his daughters, were about to meet their end. And, just in case, he packed his bag.

Glenn appeared in the doorway of his cell. He watched Hershel rolling his clothes up for a moment. "Look at what that bastard's done. Look at us."

"He's one man. There'll be others like him. There always have been."

Ducking his head, not wanting to agree but knowing it was true, Glenn sighed. "I know. It's like the walkers." He came in and sat down. "There's nothing we can do." He sat there, his whole body tense, while Hershel waited to see what he had come to say.

He realized that Glenn was holding the pocket watch in his hands, turning it over and opening the case, again and again. Hershel's eyes rested on it, wondering what it meant to the young man right now, what he thought it symbolized, but he didn't ask. Glenn would come to it more easily on his own. Hershel had learned that much about him.

"When you gave me this, I didn't fully understand what it meant. Such a … simple thing. I know what it means now. I know what it takes."

Hershel nodded. He was pretty sure Glenn did know what it took, although he was less certain he truly knew what it meant. Knowledge like that took a lifetime.

"I want to marry Maggie," Glenn said, as though he had been reading Hershel's thoughts. Or vice versa. "And we don't have to have a wedding. I don't even know if we'll last the week. But I want her to know … before … who knows."

Nodding again, Hershel told him what he hoped was obvious by now. "You have my blessing." More than that. He wondered if sometimes Glenn thought that it was only because the world was what it was and there were so few young men left that Hershel was glad he was with Maggie. But it wasn't that. It was that in this new world, you had to be able to grow, to adapt, to learn, to strengthen, and Hershel had watched Glenn through all of that, watched him take responsibility, and swallow his bitterness when his way wasn't the way the group took, and then step up again for the good of the rest of them anyway. If Hershel had had the choice, knowing what he knew now, he would have picked Glenn for his daughter out of all of them.

Glenn's eyes had filled with tears, as if he understood in those simple words everything that was in Hershel's heart. "Thank you."

He got to his feet and left the cell without another word. Hershel tucked his shirt into the bag, just in case, and looked at the empty doorway. A smile came to his lips. Glenn was right; they might not last out the week. But what time there was, they could think of the future. They could dream about a life that meant something, a home that would last, because as long as there was life, there was hope. As long as there was love, life was worth living—and fighting for.

Maggie and Glenn had showed him that, showed them all.

As he sat there on his cot, Hershel began to imagine a wedding—a small one, makeshift, no cake because there was nothing to bake one in, but a ceremony that would be meaningful, at any rate. He would conduct the service, but no one would give Maggie away. She had already given herself, as was her right to do. The young couple would enter together, as they planned to live, and stand before him while the others stood up for them.

And he would talk about sacrifice, and love, and loss, and grief, about the way you had to pull yourself back up when you fell down, about the need for someone at your side when that happened. And he would let Maggie and Glenn know that he felt hopeful for their future, and the future for all of mankind that they represented.

Hershel came back to himself from the fantasy when he realized his cheeks were wet with his own tears. The joke was certainly on him, wasn't it? Because he had been far from approving of Glenn to begin with, and now here he was weeping with joy to know that Glenn would be his family even more formally than he already was.

Nothing for it, he was getting old, Hershel thought, pushing himself to his feet. Sitting here dreaming dreams wasn't going to get any of them anywhere. He would go and see what he could do—fortify or prepare to flee or simply give comfort. And he would do so with a lighter heart than he'd carried when he sat down here with his bag and his neatly rolled clothes.