Six Hilltop children play hopscotch on a crude grid carved in the dirt. Daryl half watches them as he sits on the bottom stair of the front porch of the historic mansion, but mostly he's concentrating on whittling an arrow. He still has plenty of pre-manufactured ones from his last supply run, but he knows one day they'll get broken or lost, and eventually he'll have to make his own. He might as well start practicing now.

A stone thuds against the tip of his boot, and he hears a long "Uh...ohhhhh!" When he looks up, Glenn, Jr. is standing a few feet away, his brown eyes wide, one finger nervously lodged in his mouth.

"It's okay," Judith tells the toddler, looming a foot above him and putting a tiny hand on his tinier shoulder. "My Daryl doesn't bite."

Daryl picks the rock up and tosses it back toward Glenn. It skids to a stop just in front of the toe of the leather moccasins Carol sewed and brought to the Hilltop for the boy's second birthday two months ago. Judith picks up the rock, takes Glenn hand, and says, "Throw ON the board." She tugs him back to the hopscotch game and patiently attempts to show him how to play.

The stairs creak behind him, and Daryl glances over as Maggie settles down beside him. She drapes an arm over her bent knees and looks out over the gardens, the greenhouse, the smokehouse, and the barns. "I guess Rick was right not to kill Negan after all. It was Negan's plan that kept the Whisperers from destroying all this."

A growl gathers in Daryl's throat. "How'n hell can ya forgive 'em?"

"Who says I have?" she asks. "But Negan's dead and gone now, and he died saving this place."

"Rick and 'Chonne – they's the ones died saving this place."

"We don't know that they're dead," Maggie insists. "They might have gotten away in that helicopter we saw flying off."

"And not come back? For almost a year?"

"Not been able to come back, maybe," she says, but her voice is defeated, as though she doesn't believe her own words.

His jaw twitching, Daryl flicks the blade across the stick and peels the skin off the branch. The knife cuts deep - too deep - and he tosses the stick forcefully against the rail.

Maggie ignores his fit and asks, "Are you going to the harvest festival?"

"Ain't exactly a festival kind of guy."

"But you'll get to see Carol."

He picks up another stick from a pile on the ground at the edge of the staircase and goes to work carving it. He's not so sure he wants to see Carol in that world that's hers and not theirs. The prison was theirs. But the prison is long gone.

You can come to the Kingdom, too, you know, Carol told him. But she had to know it wasn't true. He couldn't come to the Kingdom. He would be a leper in the Kingdom - all those good-mannered people walking around, well groomed and wearing clean clothes, tending flower gardens, playing flutes and violins beneath gazebos, offering a regal how-do-you-do at every passing.

At least here at the Hilltop they play fiddles instead of violins, harmonicas instead of flutes. They never waste good soil growing flowers, and Daryl sleeps in a platform tent – rough and simple – the way he likes it. He's needed here at the Hilltop, the sole hunter in a land of farmers. The Kingdom has plenty of hunters of its own. And at least Maggie speaks like a completely normal person, unlike Ezekiel.

Fucking Ezekiel, Daryl thinks. Fucking second-rate community theater wannabe actor.

Fucking...

handsome...

articulate...

patient...

...charming bastard.

Absolutely everything Daryl isn't.

He'll see her the next time she visits the Hilltop, but he he doesn't want to see her in the Kingdom, orbiting Ezekiel's sun. "Gonna have annoyin' music and dumbass games and tournaments and shit. Ain't my thing."

Maggie leans forward to peer at him. "Don't you think Carol will be disappointed if you don't come?"

"Why?"

"Because you're old friends. And she doesn't get to see you that often."

"You goin'?"

"No. Someone's got to be in charge here. So Enid's taking Glenn, and I'm staying behind. Besides, I know those knights will just spend all night trying to get in my pants anyway." She smirks. "You probably won't have that problem."

"Ain't gonna have that problem 'cause I ain't gonna go."

"You are going to go," Maggie says in her formal leader voice. Daryl's gotten used to that voice. It comes with pursed lips and cool eyes, and she can shift in and out of it like she's flicking a light switch.

It doesn't annoy him when she's using it on other people, but no one orders him around. He follows her because he respects her. His blade stills against the branch he's carving, and he turns to her with equally cool eyes. "Thatta command, Madame President?"

"I need you to be my eyes and ears at the Kingdom. Gather intel."

"Ain't our enemies."

"No, but, they're our trading partner. And I'm not sure we're getting the best possible deals. Let me know what they've got, what they need, what you hear them talking about wanting. Just…pay attention and give me what you can."

"Sounds like a job for Jesus."

"Jesus is still on that supply run," Maggie tells him. "I'm not sure he's going to be back in time. It's a job for you."

"Well I ain't applyin' for no job."

From behind them comes another voice – "Oh, just fucking go to the festival, Mr. Grinch."

Daryl cranes his neck back to see Rosita standing on the porch, one hip jutted out, her hand on the butt of her 9 mm. "I need you to play my boyfriend." She strides down the stairs, walks between them, and turns to face them. "If I don't have a boyfriend when I go, one of those men is going to be on me like white on rice."

"Thought ya said ya wanted to go so's you could get laid," Daryl replies. Rosita tells him whatever's on her mind when they're on watch together. The woman's got no filter, not with him anyway. She treats him like a girlfriend in the 8th grade bathroom. Maybe because he doesn't say much.

"Well I do have an itch," Rosita says. "But I don't want whatever guy I pick to scratch it to think anything is going to come of it. So if he thinks I've already got a boyfriend, he'll know it's a one-time thing."

"Ya want me to play yer cuckold?" Daryl half shouts. "Fuck no! I look like the kinda guy that would put up with another guy fuckin' my girl without kickin' his ass?"

The kids look over from their hopscotch game. Maggie pushes her hand down and whispers, "Innocent ears."

"Ain't no innocence in this world," Daryl mutters, but he does lower his voice because he sees Judith looking his way. Little Ass Kicker isn't afraid of him like the other kids. She's everybody's child now that Rick and Michonne are gone, but Daryl thinks maybe he's first in her heart – the first one to have ever fed her, the first one to rock her to sleep after her daddy and stepmamma disappeared. Judith has him wrapped around her little finger, and she damn well knows it. "Ain't gonna do it," he tells Rosita in a lowered voice. He looks suspiciously at Maggie. "Ya already know what the Kingdom has, what it needs, and what it wants!" Then he looks at Rosita. "And yer damn well capable of puttin' off men without my help. Hell is this?"

"Daryl," Maggie says with exasperation, "We just want you to go to the festival. We think it'll be good for you."

"Ain't goin'."

But then Judith breaks away from the hopscotch game, runs up to him, and wraps her arms around his leg, forcing him to pull his branch and knife back. She looks up and smiles. "My Daryl's gonna take me to the festival. Win me a prize!"

"Prize?" he asks.

"She's heard the games are going to have prizes," Maggie says. "You've got to take her."

He looks down at the little girl, who has rested her chin on his knee and is looking up at him with big blue eyes. "A'ight," he says at last.