Not Until You Find Her

Beth stared blankly into the fire. "How could you?" she asked, not looking at her sister.

Maggie looked up. Tears dried. "I thought I'd lost everyone I loved. I wanted someone to blame."

He hadn't stopped since he left their camp. Hadn't stopped for food or water. Not to rest when darkness came, he pushed on. Just focused on moving because he was afraid what would happen if he stopped.

If those words found him. And the voices of the dead started speaking. Blaming him.

So he kept going.

'Not until you find her'.

Maggie heard the others gathering their supplies. Going after him.

She could still see the confusion on his face when she'd dropped the bag at his feet. 'Leave and don't come back. Not until you find her,' she told him. And then she saw the clarity so she left.

She'd been the last person to speak to him. He'd crept away when the others were busy.

No one had noticed.

"Where is he?"

She'd asked as soon as she'd found out Daryl had found Rick, Michonne and Carl. And none of them had known. Reasoned he'd be back soon enough.

So she'd waited. Ate beside her sister.

Night started to draw in and she noticed anxious looks pass between Rick and Michonne. And then the talk started. If anyone saw which way he'd gone, if he'd said where he was going. But no one had anything.

And Maggie waited until it was dark before she sat down beside Beth and told them. That she'd told him to go and not come back without her sister.
Beth was the first one to say something. Maggie hadn't wanted to look at any of them after her confession, but to see the shock and hurt on her sisters face killed her. "Beth..."

But Beth turned from her, to Rick, who looked equally torn as Beth. "We have to look for him."

"Beth," Michonne interrupted. "In the morning. We'll find him in the morning."

No one really spoke to her all night, save for Bob, when he offered her a drink.

The others had nothing to say to her, so let her be.

"He blamed himself for the Governor attacking, for us losing the prison. For Daddy. And he couldn't stand to look for anyone afterwards. And it pissed me off until I realised he couldn't stand losing anyone else." Beth kept her eyes on her sister as she spoke. Watched the tears run down Maggie's face. "How do you think he feels now? Telling him he's to blame. How could that possibly help?"

"He could have found you!" Maggie replied.

"I didn't need saving."

Maggie wept her tears in silence.

There were walkers in the woods. He could hear them though he tried to be quiet, keep going. Dawn was breaking but the woods were still dark and dim.

And he missed it. Missed seeing it, but not stepping on it. The metal jaws snapped around his foot and he grunted in pain, keeping himself from crying out because of the fear of the walkers.

He took some deep breaths, in and out, managed the pain the best he could.

His shaking hands pulled the trap apart, releasing him. He wiped the wetness from his hands and pulled himself back away from the trap.

The trail was easy to follow once they figured out the path he took.

He'd made some attempts to slip away unnoticed but once he cleared the camp, he'd been less careful. And Michonne followed his trail. Rick followed her.

Tracks ran into a trap. A closed trap, blood smeared on it. The tracks were different now. The man they hunted carrying himself differently, blood accompanying the tracks until the tracks were lost in a mess of tracks. Two walkers downed, one with the bolt still embedded.

"There's a lot of tracks. Walkers must have smelt the blood," Michonne said as she pulled the bolt from the walkers skull.

"We need to find him now."

When he made it to the first house reached for the door with bloody hands. Forced it open and went inside. He grabbed at handles and opened the doors, smearing bloody trails as he went until he found the kitchen. He found some plastic wrapping and used it over his wound, stopping it bleeding out any further.

He pulled all the doors closed, went back out through the front door and pulled it closed.

He struggled down a few more houses and clambered over a back fence. A half eaten walker crawled around the garden.

He killed it and opened the door into the house where another single walker resided.

He made it safe before he headed up to one of the small bedrooms where he saw the woods he came from outside the window. They'd head for the first house and they'd have no trace of him afterwards. He went to the bathroom cabinet and pulled out a bandage. he couldn't find any gauze so grabbed a shirt from a closet.

Sat on the bed, he ripped the shirt up and used a clump of it folded up to soak up the blood. The wound was messy and the work left him exhausted and dizzy, which he knew wasn't right.

He pulled himself up and shut the door, pulling a dresser up against it before heading back to the bed and collapsing on it.

His last thoughts were about finding Beth.