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Faith

His mom went to church every Sunday.

Rain or shine, healthy or sick, every Sunday morning she got up and put on a nice dress. Then she dressed him and Merle in old hand-me-downs and took them down to the church a few blocks from their home. His dad never came, but Daryl liked it that way. He didn't have to worry about anyone smacking him at church.

They went to church every week until Daryl was almost eleven. His mama burned to death on a Friday, and the following Sunday a small service was held. There had been nothing to bury; Daryl was left with an empty hollow feeling at the sight of the small gravestone.

Emma Jean Dixon

1950-1985

Wife and Mother

He had stayed there for hours, just staring at the gravestone. His mama was gone, burned to nothing in her bed. It wasn't right, but at the same time, Daryl was sort of glad. His daddy wouldn't be able to beat on her anymore. He wouldn't have to see the sad look in her eyes, and she wouldn't be in pain anymore.

After a while, he finally went home. Merle wasn't in the house, but their daddy was waiting on him with a bottle of whiskey and an old leather belt.

Daryl never went to church again.

Carol Peletier lost her faith a long time ago.

When she was a child, she had gone to church every Wednesday and Sunday. Her mother would dress her up in these pretty dresses and parade her in front of everyone at the church. Her daddy never went; he never had much interest for anything that didn't involve women or drinking.

After her mother died when Carol was seventeen, Carol still attended church but with less regularity. She met Ed at her church one Sunday, and for her, he was her ticket out. She ran away with him, only to discover his dark side shortly after they were married. By then it was too late to leave, and any comfort she might have gained from attending church was long gone, so she gave up and stopped going.

The next time she set foot in a church, the world had gone to hell and she was desperately searching for her little daughter, lost in a moment of chaos on a broken highway. She had half-hoped to find some shred of comfort or familiarity in the little church, but all she found was desperation and the rotting flesh of lost parishioners still garbed in their Sunday best.

It was only after Daryl Dixon risked his life to find her daughter that she began to have just the smallest amount of faith again. But even that was quickly ripped away when the deteriorating thing that used to be her daughter stumbled out of the Greene barn and into the daylight.

The year that followed was the worst yet. The winter in particular was brutal, but somehow she continued to fight. Then there was Daryl, always right beside her or just a few steps behind; never more than a stone's throw away at any given time. As the months wore on, they grew closer, and a sense of balance was restored in Carol. She missed her daughter every second of every day, but she was slowly moving on.

Then, one warm spring day, Carol found herself looking at Daryl as he paced around with Judith in his arms. The roughneck was muttering patiently to the fussy baby as he traced a thumb over her chubby cheek, and suddenly it hit her.

This was her family.